Playwrights have texts, composers have scores, painters and sculptors have the residue of those activities, and dance is traditionally an ephemeral, effervescent, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of thing.
Interpretation
Dance is a fleeting art form that cannot be permanently captured like other art forms.
Twyla Tharp's quote highlights the unique nature of dance as an art form that stands apart from others such as writing, music, and visual arts. Unlike playwrights and composers who create lasting texts and scores, or painters and sculptors who produce tangible works that endure through time, dance is characterized by its transitory essence; it exists in the moment and then dissipates, making it both beautiful and elusive. This ephemerality underscores the unique experience of live performance and the emotional connection it fosters, even though it can't be preserved in the same way as other art forms.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of live performance, one might cite this quote to illustrate the unique qualities of dance.
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 main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!
I like the quiet it takes to pursue an idea the way I pursued 'Hamilton,' but I couldn't write a book, because there's no applause at the end of writing a book.
Poems are rough notations for the music we are.
I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can't possess radiance, you can only admire it.
The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.
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