My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal experience and physical embodiment in the creative process of choreography.
Twyla Tharp's quote highlights the integral role that her own body and personal experiences play in her artistry as a choreographer. Rather than relying solely on concepts or theories, she asserts that her physicality and lived experiences are essential to her creative expression, suggesting that true art emerges from an authentic connection between the artist and their medium.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of physical expression in dance, one could use this quote to illustrate the significance of personal experience.
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.
The red and white and starry blue _x000D_ Is freedom's shield and hope.
Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.
I change the language with which I use my voice. In opera, I know I have an orchestra behind me; I have to communicate to people very far from me.
Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.
I'm not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.
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