Twyla Tharp

American choreographer, dancer, and director

• Born: July 1, 1941
• Place of Birth: Portland, Indiana

Tharp’s unconventional art combined elements from ballet, tap, jazz, and modern dance, forming a unique fusion that transcended the boundaries between classical dance, popular culture, and avant-garde dance. She also created a new vocabulary of movement that included comedy, quirkiness, and flippant gestures. With her achievements in theater, film, and television, she showed that the traditional arts could be combined with popular culture to form an art with commercial appeal.

Early Life

Twyla Tharp (TWIH-lah thahrp) was the oldest of four children born to a Quaker family in Portland, Indiana. Her father, William, owned a Ford dealership and construction firm, while her mother, Lecile, was a music teacher. When Tharp was one and a half years old, her ambitious mother started teaching her music and ear training on the piano and soon discovered that Tharp had perfect pitch. At the age of four, Tharp began formal piano lessons.

In 1949, when Tharp was eight years old, the family moved to Rialto, California, so that the parents could operate a drive-in movie theater. Throughout her childhood and teenage years, she strove for academic excellence. Her mother also arranged for her a full schedule of extracurricular activities, including lessons in the performing arts. Tharp studied ballet, piano, violin, tap dancing, baton twirling, drums, flamenco, acrobatics, painting, German and French languages, and even shorthand.

After graduating from Pacific High School in San Bernardino, Tharp attended Pomona College then, in her sophomore year, transferred to Barnard College in New York City. She majored in art history, but to satisfy the physical education requirement, she was able to set up dance courses. She studied with Igor Schwezoff from the Kirov and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; Richard Thomas and Barbara Fallis of the American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet; modern dance pioneers Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham; and jazz teacher Eugene Lewis. With all this mentoring, she was well-trained to conceive her crossover dance style.

In 1962, Tharp married Peter Young, a painter, but they later divorced. In 1963, she graduated from Barnard College and joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company. In 1965, she started her own dance company, the Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation. Tharp’s companion in the mid-1960s was minimalist artist Bob Huot. They married in 1967 but were separated in 1972. They had a son, Jesse, who was born in 1971.

Life’s Work

The Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation premiered Tank Dive, a three-movement piece for one dancer and four others, at Hunter College in New York City in April 1965. For five years her troupe struggled financially but kept developing and experimenting.

Widespread recognition and commercial success came when Robert Joffrey, founder of the Joffrey Ballet, attended a performance of The Bix Pieces in 1972 and commissioned Tharp to create a ballet for his company. Tharp created Deuce Coupe, which was set to the popular music of the Beach Boys. When it premiered as a joint dance by Tharp’s troupe and the Joffrey Ballet in February 1973, Deuce Coupe was the first crossover ballet, or rock ballet, and was an immediate sensation that appealed to a wide audience.

In January 1976, the American Ballet Theatre premiered Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove, which became the world’s most famous crossover ballet and one of the most popular pieces of the 1970s. Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famous Russian ballet dancer who had defected to the West, danced the lead role, which required virtuoso dancing, humor, and experimental moves designed specifically for him.

Tharp also worked in television, choreographing Sue’s Leg (1975) for the opening episode of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) program Dance in America. In 1977, she coproduced and directed the video Making Television Dance for PBS.

By the 1980s, Tharp was elevating popular and rock music in dance. In 1981, with David Byrne of the pop-rock band Talking Heads, she collaborated on The Catherine Wheel, an evening-long dance-theater production about the disintegration of the nuclear family, televised by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Nine Sinatra Songs, which premiered in 1982, explored turn-of-the-century exhibition-ballroom dancing and the music of Frank Sinatra.

From 1988 to 1990, Tharp was with the American Ballet Theatre as an artistic associate and resident choreographer. She then formed another troupe, which toured successfully with Baryshnikov in Cutting Up in 1992–93. In 2002–3, she was the choreographer of Twyla Tharp Dance, which toured the United States and other countries. Tharp also created dance pieces for other companies, including the Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance, Paris Opera Ballet, and Boston Ballet. In 1985, she codirected the PBS television production Baryshnikov by Tharp.

In film, Tharp was the choreographer for director Milos Forman’s film version of the 1960s rock musical Hair (1978). Tharp and Forman collaborated again in 1980 on Ragtime, based on the historical novel by E. L. Doctorow. Composer and songwriter Randy Newman received his first Academy Award nomination for this film. Tharp also choreographed Forman’s Academy Award–winning Amadeus in 1984. In 1985, she worked with director Taylor Hackford on White Nights, a film noted for the exceptional dancing by its stars, Gregory Hines and Baryshnikov.

Set to the music of Billy Joel, Tharp’s award-winning dance musical Movin’ Out (2002) toured nationally for three years, beginning in 2004. The Times They Are a-Changin’ (2006) featured Bob Dylan’s lyrics and music. She also incorporated the music of other popular musicians, including Chuck Berry, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen.

Tharp returned to the music of Frank Sinatra for the 2009 world premiere of Come Fly with Me, a musical with eight different characters, for which Tharp combined her choreography with Sinatra's recorded voice and a live band. The show opened on Broadway the following year under the title Come Fly Away. Later in 2010, Tharp brought a streamlined version of the show to Las Vegas and launched a Come Fly Away tour of the United States, Canada, and Japan between 2011 and 2012. Between 2012 and 2013, Tharp choreographed The Princess and the Goblin (2012), a joint commission for the Atlanta Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet; Treefrog in Stonehenge (2013) for the American Dance Festival; and Waiting at the Station (2013) for Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Between 2015 and 2014, Tharp and her company choreographed at least fifteen performances, including Beethoven Opus 130 (2016) performed at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center; Second Duet (2021) performed at the New York City Center; and Brel (2024) and The Ballet Master (2024), both performed at the Joyce Theater. In June 2024, she premiered the dance-and-musical hybrid How Long Blues at the outdoor venue at Little Island in Manhattan.

Tharp has been honored with several major awards and nominations during her career. Making Television Dance won the Chicago International Film Festival Award. For Baryshnikov by Tharp, she won two Emmy Awards and the Director’s Guild of America Award for Outstanding Director Achievement. For Movin’ Out, which set a new standard for the rock musical, Tharp received the 2003 Tony Award for best choreography, the 2003 Astaire Award, the Drama League Award for Sustained Achievement in Musical Theater, the Drama Desk Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Choreography. Come Fly Away (2010) garnered two Tony Award nominations. Tharp’s other honors include the 1992 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (called the genius award), the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor, and twenty honorary doctorates. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1992, she published her autobiography Push Comes to Shove, followed by The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (with Mark Reiter, 2003), and The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together (with Jesse Kornbluth, 2009). In 2019, she published her fourth book, Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life.

Significance

Tharp became an internationally celebrated dancer and choreographer. Combining elements from classical ballet, jazz, popular culture, and modern dance, she created an eclectic dance style known for its unique blending of strict discipline with high energy and freedom of movement. Between 1963 and 2013, she has choreographed more than 160 works, including works for film, television, and Broadway, and she has created dances for many companies. Ballet and dance companies around the globe stage Tharp's works.

Bibliography

Acocella, Joan Ross. Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays. Pantheon, 2007.

Bloom, Julie. “New Twyla Tharp Ballet.” The New York Times, vol. 22, no. 3, 2011, p. 2. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 7 June 2024.

Greskovic, Robert. “The Kids Are All Right.” Wall Street Journal–Eastern Edition, vol. 15, no. 2, 2012, p. D5. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 7 June 2024.

Kourlas, Gia. "The World Needs an Action Hero. Enter Twyla Tharp (and Camus)." The New York Times, 30 May 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/arts/dance/twyla-tharp-how-long-blues-little-island.html. Accessed 7 June 2024.

Mazo, Joseph H. Prime Movers: The Makers of Modern Dance in America. 2nd ed., Princeton Book, 2000.

Parish, James Robert. Twyla Tharp: Dancer and Choreographer. Ferguson, 2005.

Parker, David. “From the Heart.” Dance Magazine, vol. 85, no. 1, 2011, p. 210. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 7 June 2024.

Siegel, Marcia B. Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance. St. Martin’s, 2006.

Tharp, Twyla. Push Comes to Shove: An Autobiography. Bantam, 1992.

Tharp, Twyla, with Jesse Kornbluth. The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together. Simon, 2009.

Tharp, Twyla, with Mark Reiter. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life A Practical Guide. Simon, 2003.

"Twyla Tharp." Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation, 2024, www.twylatharp.org/bio. Accessed 7 June 2024.