A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

The formal education that I received made little sense to me.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
- Twyla Tharp Quote

There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything.
- Twyla Tharp Quote