Daily Inspiration Quote by Twyla Tharp

Twyla Tharp’s line lands like a quiet correction to the romance of artistic lineage. In dance, proximity can get mistaken for legitimacy: who trained you, whose studio you survived, what “school” you belong to. Tharp rejects that gatekeeping in a single breath. She didn’t “study with Balanchine” - the credential people would expect a major American choreographer to claim - yet she insists on his importance anyway. Influence, she implies, isn’t a signed certificate. It’s an encounter, sometimes at a distance, that reorganizes your eye.

The subtext is partly defensive, partly generous. Defensive because she knows the question hiding behind the statement: If you weren’t his student, what right do you have to inherit anything from his revolution? Generous because she refuses the petty art-world reflex to downplay predecessors in order to look original. Tharp can admit debt without surrendering authorship.

Context matters: Balanchine’s neoclassical ballet defined an era - speed, musicality, stripped ornament, a cool modernism that changed what “American” could look like on stage. Tharp, often positioned as the great border-crosser between ballet and modern, signals that she absorbed those values without being absorbed by the institution. It’s also a feminist, pragmatic kind of independence: you can be shaped by a master without being claimed by him. The line honors Balanchine while preserving Tharp’s central thesis as an artist: influence is real, but permission is optional.