Twyla Tharp is one of the world's greatest choreographers: artistically honoured and commercially successful. This book is Tharp's analysis of her creative process/habits. It's a very clearly written, optimistic, and inspiring book.
Tharp does it all; she's a dancer, choreographer, director, entrepreneur, manager. She understands the necessarily chaotic nature of creativity, as well as the need for discipline in harnessing that chaos and shaping it to serve our ends. We are partially the servants of our best creative moments, partially the creators, and partially the masters. This is book will be incredibly useful to any manager or creative person who is willing to listen to it.
Interesting passages:
"being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns" (p.6)
"Too much planning implies you've got it all under control. That's boring, unrealistic, and dangerous. It lulls you into a complacency that removes one of the artist's most valuable conditions: being pissed. Art is competitive with yourself, with the past, with the future. It is a special war zone where you first make the rules, and then you test the consequences." (p. 133)
"The more you fail in private, the less you will fail in public. In many ways, the creative act is editing." (p. 213)
"When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love, and faith." (p.243)
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