Interview: Twyla Tharp
Dancer and Choreographer

When did you first have a vision of what you wanted to do?

Twyla Tharp: It depends on how you define vision. If it's a sense of the way I enjoyed spending time most was dancing. It was from the time I was a very small child, when I puttered around the house. I was four or five years old, I remember already having a regime. It was the way I always identified myself. If you're speaking of professionally, it was not until I was after college, until I had graduated. So, it was much, much later that I made a professional commitment to it because quite frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer...because it's very difficult to earn a living; because there's very little continuity, and because just when you arrive at the apex of your skills, it's time to retire. And consequently, it seemed like perhaps a not wise investment of a substantial portion of my life. But as it turned out, I decided that since it was the thing that I felt I did the best, that I owed it to all that be to pursue it. That that was what I had to do, whether it meant I was going to be able to earn a living or not.

You felt there was a magnetic force there?

Twyla Tharp: You called it vision, I call it analyzing what my strengths were. It just so happened there was no market whatsoever for my strength, unless I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough. Also, when I auditioned for the Radio City Rockettes they said, "We love your fouettés, but can't you smile?" And things of that nature transpired between me and a commercial future. So, I managed to find a way of subsisting in the beginning by doing odd jobs, Kelly Girl temp work, selling perfume at Macy's, and any and everything to be able to sustain studying and beginning a career with a group of dancers who were willing to devote five years, really, of their lives to me, working very seriously, with complete commitment, for not a penny. This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider, I would imagine. Either you have to be either hopelessly passionate, I guess is the word that gets devoted here, or very stupid. None of us were very stupid, we were all college graduates, actually. But we all believed that we could make an impact on something that was very important to us, which was dancing and the future of dancing, and what could be accomplished. We determined we would do that.

I get a feeling you worked with your first company almost like a scientist in a lab.

Twyla Tharp: This is true.

We thought that there were certain possibilities, in terms of physical movement, in terms of community, and in terms of what dance could address in our society. And those were the issues that we went after. And we worked with a great deal of rigor. Which is to say, we were very, very dedicated. We worked six days a week, we worked at least six hours every day. We did not perform much at all. It was really about the experience of learning and exploring and growing, for five years.

Who were the dancers?

Twyla Tharp: For the first three years there were four, and for the next two years we were six.

You started with all female dancers. Why was that?

Twyla Tharp: In those days, male dancers, as they are still today, were a rarer breed than women. A good male dancer, a male dancer frankly as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them because there was work that was available for them in all the major companies. That's what we said, but the truth of matter is, we didn't want them. Martha Graham also began her first company as all women. I think it's because in modern dance, the female force has always been a very potent one. Modern dance in this country, in any case, is generally laid at the doorstep of female creators: Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey. The next generation were men, but they spun-off from that generation of women. Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, all came from the women because it was a primarily female force, I decided that we should not, in a way, pollute the experiment. It's like mixed tennis. It's a different game.

Men and women are very different athletes, and frankly, I didn't want to deal with the male potential, I wanted to deal with the female potential. Plus which, obviously men and women bond very differently. And at that time we wanted to begin very simply. We used no costumes, we used no music, we had no partnering. We wanted just to explore movement in time and space. And in order to keep that experiment, as you've called it -- which I think is accurate -- pure, we determined that it should be sexually oriented only as women. And then after five years, the first man was introduced. And bit by bit I came to be much more interested in technical matters like partnering and so forth, until it's become fully integrated.

But our partnering, for example, evolved in an entirely different way than it would have had we had men from the beginning. Because we had to develop a strength, not only physically, but emotionally, that is very different from how most women are when they're partnered.

Twyla Tharp: I do weight training, and have for quite a while, and I'm much stronger than most women. Consequently, when I work with men, or when I'm partnered by men, I can do things no other women can do. Just in terms of counterbalances and how I support myself against him. And we can actually go into kinds of movement that haven't been available before, simply because I've strengthened myself as a woman, not because I've weakened him.

How would you define modern dance?

Twyla Tharp: First of all, I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving. I think of it was involving at least as much a ballet technique as the so-called traditional modern dance technique. A lot of the issue was evolving a technique that we felt we owned. We went back to the beginning building blocks. We went back to very simple things, like walking, running, skipping, things that belong to everybody. That are not called modern dance, that are not claimed by the ballet. From there we began to see certain parallels. Then it was no big deal to as we say, "goose it up a notch." We could kick it up back to where the stylization had been, because we knew where it came from. But we took nothing for granted in the beginning.

What turns you on so much about dance?

Twyla Tharp: It's not so much about being turned on. It's about being not turned off. I think it's something everybody, not just dancers, has to do on a daily basis, or else they're going to be in trouble. Because not only are they physically out of shape, which most people are, but they don't know how to gauge their foundation. They don't know their bottom line. That comes from physical work.

I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies, for starters, for example. I think that anybody who wants to challenge their mind to operate -- any artists, any writer, any economist, any entrepreneur who wants their mind to function at a peak knows they have to work physically at something, whatever, on a daily basis. It is a necessary part of the human machine. We're a machine and we have to be worked in the same way we have to be fed. So it's not a question of being turned on, it's a question of respecting a necessity.

It sounds like your mother had a lot of ambition for you.

Twyla Tharp: My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment, which is a good thing for someone who still thinks of themselves as a very basic American. I think that I had a very eclectic and, in a way, a very democratic education. I'm grateful for that.

I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift, and that I should be tutored outside the house, because she didn't want it to become too much an amateur situation. She wanted it to be objectified. So I started formal piano training when I was four. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. German wasn't taught in the high school, so I had German. And shorthand, in case I ever needed to be a secretary or, if I didn't need to be a secretary, at least when I went to college I would be able to take all my lectures down verbatim, and then go back and see what the professor had said. That's the downside of my mother's education because she made no selections, and she made it seem as though one had a lifetime to do that. That's no true. A young person has to start making decisions for themselves at a much earlier age than an overbearing parent allows one. I think that in combination with the degree to which a childhood and the ability to socialize was taken away, was eradicated from my life. It was a stiff price to pay for the education that I received. But, you know, six of one, half-a-dozen of another. I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift. The rest of the pieces I work at reassembling for myself.

Was school an important part of your life?

Twyla Tharp: Well, it was necessary that I be valedictorian, I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. I hated the pressure of the situation, because I had to excel. It wasn't a choice on my part, it was expected.

And in college I went three semesters to Pomona, and then I transferred to Barnard. I graduated in art history, and I was allowed to take, outside of the physical education department, all the dancing that I could avail myself of in New York; which, at the time, was really quite extraordinary.

I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching. I worked with Merce Cunningham. I worked with Erick Hawkins. Alwin Nikolais was teaching. I was able to join the Taylor Company immediately when I got out. I had classes with Antony Tudor, and I saw all the great young dancers coming up in these classes: Cynthia Gregory, Toni Lander, Violette Verdy, wonderful, wonderful dancers. All the City Ballet dancers were regulars in the classes that I took.

Consequently, I had a very wide exposure to all of these dance elements when I was still in college. It meant a double curriculum, but it meant half the time, so there you are.

What teachers most inspired you?

Twyla Tharp: Martha was very important to me. I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me. During the course of my entire academic career, from kindergarten through a college degree, I would say only one professor. Julius Heald, at Columbia, taught a course in Flemish iconography. He seemed to be a gentleman who pursued investigation as an art form, and was very creative in his work.

Twyla Tharp: The formal education that I received made little sense to me. I've used it. I'm very grateful to have had it. I use particularly the aspects of art history, and that sense of context all the time in working. I always feel a spectrum and parameters to what I do. It's not isolated. And I'm very grateful to having had access to those disciplines. But in terms of individuals who actually inspired, I think that I'd have to say that very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry. Actually that's not true; I loved geometry. I love forms, that's part of the investigation of space.

I can't even say it about biology, because biology is a living thing. I loved English. I write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I enjoy the use of the English language. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to abuse the language a great deal, and carry on rehearsals in French, which the French dancers will lie down for, because they can't believe what I'm saying.

There really is nothing I ever had access to that I didn't appreciate. I just don't connect it to an individual. I always, somehow, knew that I was going to dance. I wouldn't give that respect to any of these other people who were in these misguided professions, where they were not dancing.

You said that you had to excel, you didn't have a choice, and yet you are today one of the leading figures of the day in your field. Wasn't that a positive force, that pressure to perform?

Twyla Tharp: It has its up sides, it has its down sides. I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury. Whether one's coming from a poor family or a wealthy family, that kind of attention is a privilege. On the other hand, the necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely redded and wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're forced to learn to block out emotions. I think this is the case with a lot of overachievers. It's not only very painful in a personal life for many, many overachievers. It also - called "over-achievers," but I don't believe in that concept. There's achieving or not achieving. But, in any case, so-called over-achievers - pay for it personally. And, as important in the case of their work, which is where they've vested to so much of their life force, they short-circuit that as well, because they don't know how to be able to integrate the sense of so many things that are very real, and that are very tangible. It's just that we don't study things like fear. We don't study things like excitement. We don't study things like love. We don't study things like mourning. We try as people who have commitments and obligations to blockade those and go our course towards excellence, and that's a lie.

You feel you've paid a price.

Twyla Tharp: I've definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange. Once you realize that, you feel empowered because you say, "Okay, this is what it's going to cost. Do I want to do that? And you say, "No, I don't want to go quite that far again." This spring past, I was already committed to making two pieces, which I needed to do in a very short period of time. I had a major emotional shift in my life, and I was not able to take the time to address that, because I was committed. It has been very costly to me personally. I'll never be in that position again. It was too costly. In the future, I will make certain that I commit to projects so that there's enough breathing space for me to have an emotional life. If I need to have a day or two to mourn, I can afford to feel I can take that.

You once said that dancing is when you feel most alive. Is that true?

Twyla Tharp: When I'm in the studio, when I'm warm, when I'm what people call improvising, but what I call futzing because improvisation seems like such a... somehow institutionalized word. What I do is completely the opposite of institutionalized, it's the messiest thing you can imagine. That when I'm in a certain state where the cerebral powers are turned off, and the body just goes according to directive that I know not of, it's at those times that I feel a very special connection to... I feel the most right. I don't want to become too mystic about this, but things feel as though they're in the best order at that particular moment. It's a short period. It goes only, at maximum, an hour. I pay a very great price to be able to maintain that. But it is, that hour that -- I use the same phrase over and over again -- that tells me who I am. I think it's that way for anyone who does anything that is personal to them. There are moments where things come, and they don't know where they've come from. It's the business of discovery, and being able to have that freshness in your daily procedure that enrichens the life. It keeps the discipline that's necessary for any artist from becoming stale.

Are you saying that confusion is the secret to creation?

Twyla Tharp: I think any scientist would probably tell you the same thing. As though I should speak for scientists. I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don't already know about.

You have to have a lot of faith in yourself to work through that confusion.

Twyla Tharp: You have to also believe there's something at the other side. And yes, you do have to have faith in yourself. You also have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it. You have to have that security, or you have to have that confidence.

Were there books that had an impact on you?

Twyla Tharp: No. I read a lot, but I don't remember anything particularly impacting me. It was just something I did to try to quench my restlessness. I have a kind of unstillness about me that has to be constantly tended to. I'm hoping that what I'm talking about -- this reintegration of life forces into the working procedure -- will make me a little less uneasy. I think that I've always had to keep the walls in place, and the only way to do that is to keep yourself constantly occupied. That doesn't necessarily mean you're doing good work all the time, you're just doing busy work a lot of the time.

When you were young, were social events part of your life?

Twyla Tharp: I worked at the drive-in. From the time I was 8 years old, until I went to college, I worked at the drive-in theater my parents owned, either selling tickets, or working in the snack bar. That's what I did weekends, evenings, whenever I wasn't practicing, or actually in the car on the way to these lessons. So there was no social life.

Do you feel that, as an adult, your career has kept you from having a personal life?

Twyla Tharp: No. I have a son. I don't mean to say that I haven't had a life, I have. It's just that I have maintained a barricade between the two, that I no longer understand. I think that has created a certain amount of pain and confusion on both sides of the line. Both in terms of the work, and in terms of my personal life.

Did you feel destined to be a leader?

Twyla Tharp: Absolutely.

Twyla Tharp: I thought I had to make an impact on history. It was quite simple. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do. And whether or not that's been accomplished, at least I have the common sense to know we don't determine those things. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I certainly gave it 20 years of my best shot.

Was there someone who gave you a big break in your career?

Twyla Tharp: Yes. I would say that for the first five years I pretty much seized things. But Bob Joffrey saw a piece of mine called The Bix Pieces at the Delacorte around 1971. From that piece, he had the breadth of vision to see that what I was doing could be translated to what his dancers understood. I already knew this, because I had been studying classical ballet for a long time. But a lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn't do the other. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things. Bob saw that what I did had a very strong balletic base to it, and he asked me to make a piece for his company. That took a real leap of faith on his part. This is what is ordinarily called a break, because it certainly is what introduced me into the commercial world. From there I made another piece for the Joffrey called, As Time Goes By. After that I did Push Comes to Shove, for American Ballet Theater with Baryshnikov. Milos Forman saw that piece and asked me if I would do the movie of Hair. From Hair I was able to begin working in pictures and to extend my career into television. Now I am very fortunate because I am in a position where I need to expand the definition of movement much beyond the parameters of what can be accomplished in dancing, per se.

There's an ephemeral nature to dance, if it's not recorded on film or video. Does that ever bother you?

Twyla Tharp: Nobody likes to see that which they've invested in disappear from the face of the earth before they've even died. This is not cool. I think that in the case of a piece like, As Time Goes By, which was done at a very particular moment in time, in the early '70s, when this bridge building was going on between modern dance and ballet with a bit of hindsight and a bit of historical perspective because my career is now over a quarter of a century. And as the year 2000 approaches, we will have completed a century of dance. We can now almost see what that looks like. We can now see what the landmarks, in fact are. For better or for worse, As Time Goes By is one of those. So when you say, am I troubled by the fact that ephemerally, it is at this point in time anyway, non visible, of course. Because it is a document of our time and a document of an art form that is very important, and it just is not going to be available to future generations. This is not cool.

Has your music training had an impact in your work?

Twyla Tharp: I not only have a very intimate connection with rhythm because of... I'm sure that children who are fortunate enough to have professional parents -- or parents who introduce them at a very young and emotional age to a calling that becomes their profession and their chosen passion, which seems like a contradiction in terms but is not -- have an advantage over all others. The fact that my mother held me before I could really walk, and I was dealing with music, embeds it in a way that is otherwise just not possible. That very, very early training, so that rhythmically I have a sense of it. Aurally I have a sense of it. It's connected to smell, it's connected to taste. It's not a dry thing. It has a great deal of living force to it.

What is the role of instinct in your creations?

Twyla Tharp: It's the key thing. The instinct is the item that you register, you attempt to catch it and you attempt to get it as spontaneously and as quickly into a form where you can say exactly what you meant to say. The longer you struggle with it, the muddier it becomes. That's why the business of skills and techniques is so important. Because the more of those you have, the faster you can operate.

Sometimes we have to learn the rules, so that we can break them.

Twyla Tharp: Yes, but I think that there's something a litter perverse about that.

Twyla Tharp: In and of itself, breaking rules is not an art. That's simply an extension of, and a challenge of, what the traditions are. You have to create something either with the rules, or without the rules. But simply breaking the rules, which I've done my fair share of, is not all that creative.

Can you share with us some of the most exciting moments of your career?

Twyla Tharp: With each piece that I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.

I'm sure that as I've made major transitions, the rewards have been different. The rewards of dancing, myself, are very different from choreographing. The rewards of working with dancers you've worked intimately with is very different from dancers that belong to a company you go into. The rewards of extending your discipline and incorporating whole new elements. For example, as I begin to try to deal with film and the element of storytelling, and putting a dramatic narrative at the spine of the action, rather than simply abstract time and space, this is a very big shift, and I'm sure the rewards will be different.

But the reward that I felt for doing a piece called The Fugue in 1970 will never be surpassed. Because I knew then what an accomplishment it was and how far I had come in order to be able to make counterpoint, which is what that represented. How to link two lines in relationship to one another, so that they were bound, and reinforced one another. You give your own accomplishments, and that's what reward is about. It's not about honors, it's not about celebrity, it's certainly not about money.

Did you have any idea that Deuce Coupe would be the hit that it was?

Twyla Tharp: There are ideas, and then there are ideas. The piece was not without a certain amount of calculation. That's the first piece I did for the Joffrey. I went for a season to watch the Joffrey Company and the Joffrey audience, before I made the piece. It was very distinctly tailored for both the audience and for the company. On the other hand, it is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience. And all you can do is make your sincerest stab at saying, "Hey, I think you could understand what I'm trying to say if I say it this way. I think I know you well enough that this is how I need to say it for you." I don't consider that selling out. I consider that going halfway to meet a person, and I consider that to be what communications is all about. Deuce Coupe was very successful in that regard. As far as watching, I was in it. So I was too busy hopping around backstage to have any sense about what it was doing to the audience out front. I was having too much fun.

You also elevated pop music with your Beach Boys piece.

Twyla Tharp: Again, I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't. I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway: I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart. That is a total lie. I think of them as being completely different, and I don't think of them as being that far apart. This is one of the things that we have to accept about art is that it's full of paradoxes and contradictions, and they're equally true, both sides.

What personal characteristics are most important for fulfillment in one's career and life?

Twyla Tharp: For me it's always taking that next step forward. I often say, the only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts. I have to feel that each thing I've learned I can push to another point next time. I'm not very good with repetition. I would rather not work than feel that repetition is the order of the day.

I think that the challenge is always in taking with you what you understand, but pushing it to another point. I don't believe in rushing, and dropping it off and saying this is done and over with. That to me, that form of rebellion doesn't make sense to me. I've always attempted to familiarize myself with the traditions, and consider that a responsibility of the artist. I think it's a bit facile to go in as the avant-garde traditionally is expected to do and just chop off the past and say, "Okay, now we start." It seems a little wasteful to me. Let's take what we've got and let's push it somewhere and let's use it because why waste all those good lessons about how the body moves. We don't have 300 years. The classic ballet has been working that long, learning lessons of the body. Let's hurry up and get that together, so we can go on with it.

You've worked with female dancers, as well as male dancers, like the great Baryshnikov.

Twyla Tharp: Mischa is a great dancer.

It's also, I think going to be true that the 20th century is the domain in the classical ballet of the classical male dancer in a way that it never was before. It was always about the ballerina. Part of that is because the choreographers were always men. Consequently, they shaped the roles for women as they wished them to be. When I started choreographing for classical ballet companies there been, before me two women who had ever made a ballet on a classical company. So, of course, I'm interested in the male dancer. Plus which, not only Mischa (Baryshnikov), but Rudi (Nureyev) was a virtuoso, and (Edward) Villella. There are these days young men dancing who have a power and potency that we respond to because of athletics. We're trained, unfortunately, and indoctrinated in the facts that the male physicality can be marketed in a way the female cannot. Consequently, you have the multimillion-dollar athletes in the male world, and practically none in the female. This has had an impact in the dance world. The stars there in the classical world these days are men. I was fortunate to love men, so I could put them on stage and make roles for them, and move through their bodies in a way that they enjoy doing that they responded to, as the ballerinas have to male choreographers for centuries.

Is the humor and wit in your work a conscious effort?

Twyla Tharp: Any comic is a tragic soul.

It's just a part of my nature. It also is true that comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them. I think that there's been an element of that in the work. It's also true that comedy is something that allows an audience to engage in art. It welcomes them in. It allows them to connect with it, and that's always been very important to me. I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent, and absolutely everything that could be accomplished. I just have not wanted it to be elitist. I learned very early that an audience would relax and would look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. It became a more human thing, and I encouraged that. Plus which, there's an energy -- and dancing, after all, is about energy -- that comes through the release of tension that is laughter. There's something that sparkles in humor in a way that nothing else does. And I'm always very, very pleased to see that element when it just comes, and it's just out.

What are you most interested in accomplishing next?

Twyla Tharp: I'm co-writing a movie. We have a first draft done. I want to get this movie produced. I will direct and choreograph it. It is a musical of a sort that hasn't really been approached before.

I have lots of intuitions about musicals, because I've worked on five pictures, and have always felt a little frustrated. I've worked with wonderful directors. Milos Forman is a great director, Jim Brooks is a wonderful writer and director. It's not that I begrudge their efforts, it's just that they are not at heart musical souls. It's been a long while since there has been a musical soul at the helm.

I want to say how privileged I feel to be on the cusp of having this opportunity. I'm very, very anxious to exercise it well and curious to see what will happen.

We're all curious as well. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.