A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the rigid separation between different forms of dance can be detrimental to creativity and expression.
Twyla Tharp expresses her belief that the artificial barriers between different dance styles, such as modern dance and ballet, are restrictive and counterproductive. She argues that these walls limit the potential for blending influences and innovations, advocating for a more integrated approach to art that allows for the exploration and fusion of various techniques and styles. By challenging the notion of exclusivity in dance, she emphasizes the importance of versatility and openness in artistic expression.
In practice
In a lecture about the importance of artistic fusion, this quote can illustrate the need to break down barriers in the creative process.
Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.
I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft.
I don't really need to be remembered. I hope the music's remembered.
Comic-book pages are vertical, and movie screens are relentlessly horizontal. But it's all the same form. We use different tools, but we get the job done. I'm completely in love with CGI. It's great for conveying a cartoonist's sense of reality.
I gave my hero a talent I'd love to have. Who wouldn't want to fly?
Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.
If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.
My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.
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