twyla tharp

born 1941
American dancer and choreographer

Born on July 1, 1941, in Portland, Indiana, Twyla Tharp grew up there and in Los Angeles; her childhood included comprehensive training in music and dance. While a student at Barnard College, she studied at the American Ballet Theatre School and received instruction from Richard Thomas, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham, among others.

In 1963, shortly before her graduation from Barnard, she joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company, where she soon established herself as a dancer of considerable talent and imagination. In 1965 she formed her own troupe.

Tharp's first publicly performed piece of choreography, Tank Dive (left), was presented in 1965 at Hunter College. Over the next several years she choreographed numerous pieces, many of which employed street clothes, a bare stage, and no music. With her offbeat, technically precise explorations of various kinds and combinations of movements, she built a small but devoted following. In 1971 Tharp adopted jazz music and began creating dances that appealed to larger audiences. Her choreography retained its technical brilliance, often overlaid with an air of nonchalance, while its touches of flippant humour became more marked.

In addition to her work with Twyla Tharp Dance, she has choreographed for Mikhail Baryshnikov and American Ballet Theatre (Push Comes to Shove, Bach Partita, The Little Ballet, Sinatra Suite, Quartet, Everlast, Brief Fling), the City Center Joffrey Ballet (Deuce Coupe, As Time Goes By), the Paris Opéra Ballet (Rules of the Game), and collaborated with Jerome Robbins to create Brahms/Handel for New York City Ballet.

Now numbering over 120, her pieces established Tharp as one of the most innovative and popular modern choreographers. She has made dances to a range of music which extends from early American jazz (Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton) to classical (Haydn, Mozart, Bach) and pop music (Frank Sinatra, Beach Boys, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen). She has worked with commissioned scores by contemporary composers David Van Tiegehm, Glenn Branca, and David Byrne.

Recognized for her work in film, Tharp choreographed for four feature films, three directed by Milos Forman: Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980), the Academy Award winning Amadeus (1984), and the Taylor Hackford film White Nights (1985), which co-starred Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. In 1983, The Catherine Wheel, danced to a score by David Byrne and first performed on Broadway in 1981, was filmed for television under Tharp's direction and aired on the BBC and on the PBS Great Performances series.

Other televised work includes The Scrapbook Tape (1982), a video anthology of Tharp's work, Making Television Dance, which won the Chicago International Film Award in 1980, and Sue's Leg, presented in the premiere season of Dance in America (1976). In 1985, Tharp won Emmy Awards in both choreography and co-direction with Don Mischer for Baryshnikov by Tharp. In the same year, she directed and choreographed the Broadway version of Singin' in the Rain, which ran for over a year. In 1988 she joined the American Ballet Theatre where she served as artistic associate until 1990.

Now in her early sixties, Tharp's physical and mental energy is daunting and she is still throwing herself into her small troupe of maverick dancers. Her new dance musical Movin' Out (see Gallery), which she conceived, choreographed and directed to the songs of Billy Joel, is one of the hottest shows in New York. Thanks to her gutsy, gorgeous choreography, this tale of friendship and romance during the Vietnam era has wooed a traditional theatregoing audience, while Tharp herself has picked up a Tony Award. As she puts it, "for the first time dancers are really mainlining on Broadway".

In addition to Movin' Out, which starts touring soon, there's her own company, Twyla Tharp Dance, which tours regularly with a repertoire of her shorter works. "By the time 2003 is over I will have hired more dancers than anybody in the world," she claims. Tharp's companies are always astounding; she has the ability to find and develop dancers in a way that no other choreographer does.

These days she's in the gym at six in the morning, honing those famously strong legs, and in the theatre at night. In between are rehearsals, auditions, administration, meetings, interviews. But her brain never slows. She has the kind of mind that processes information with superhuman speed and efficiency, and doesn't pause for dawdlers. Her ballets can be like that too. Dazzlingly clever and dizzyingly high-powered, yet always entertaining.

Tharp's 1992 autobiography, Push Comes to Shove, offered a tantalising insight into her demanding creative personality. Her new book, The Creative Habit, will be published in America in September 2003. Tharp is a compelling writer. The Creative Habit, though, is not about dance; it's a how-to book. "It's about how everyone in whatever occupation can prepare to be more creative or imaginative. We think of creativity as being spontaneous but it's lies, all lies. It's all about preparation: the best work is done with the best preparation up front."

Photograph top left: Tank Dive, 1965