Art & Creativity Quote by Twyla Tharp

Tharp’s list lands like a polite indictment: not of training itself, but of the American impulse to over-engineer a child. The sentence structure does the heavy lifting. It’s a breathless inventory, each clause stacked on the next, turning enrichment into accumulation. “From there” is the tell: one early decision becomes a conveyor belt. The humor is dry, almost deadpan, because Tharp doesn’t dramatize the pressure; she lets the sheer variety do it for her.

The specificity is doing cultural work. “Little violas” shrinks the instrument into a toy-sized obligation, a detail that makes the regimen feel both privileged and absurd. “Dancing lessons of every sort and description” is a miniature parody of breadth-as-virtue, the kind of omnivorous curriculum that promises a well-rounded self while quietly erasing the self’s preferences. Then she pivots to “German. And shorthand” - the period-like bluntness of those last two fragments reads like a punchline. German suggests seriousness, shorthand suggests utility, and together they expose the underlying parental fantasy: the child as future resume.

Coming from a choreographer famous for discipline and rigor, the subtext isn’t anti-training. It’s about how artists get made in environments where choice is often outsourced to adults, and where taste is discovered only after the fact. Tharp’s tone implies a complicated gratitude: this was pressure, yes, but also raw material. The quote works because it captures the paradox of elite formation - the same system that constrains you can also stockpile the tools you later use to escape it.