Twyla Tharp Explorations

(Jack Mitchell/Getty) “If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.” -Twyla Tharp A lot has happened between 1941 and present day.  The past 76 years of world history had been at Twyla Tharp's fingertips.  Throughout Twyla Tharp's life, so much has happened in politics, technology, society, and even other art forms, that could have influenced Tharp's personal style and choreography. 1950s I thought I would begin in the 1950s, although Tharp was between the ages of 9 and 19, I believe that this decade still had some impact and influence on Tharp's personality and her choreographic work.  Many would describe the 50s as being a festive decade, since the Great Depression ended, World War II was over, and the economy was booming.  Although a lot of the 1950s were blissful, there was still segregation in America.  In 1954, the US Supreme Court declared racial segregation is u...

1976:  Twyla Tharp had choreographed  Push Comes to Shove   for Mikhail Baryshnikov and the American Ballet Theatre. "In the end, all collaborations are love stories." -Twyla Tharp Tharp's training began with ballet, not to mention baton twirling and musical instruments.  As Tharp went on to college to pursue a degree in art history, she kept her passion for dance by taking classes outside of school.  While in New York City, Tharp was able to study at the American Ballet Theatre school, and study with some of the most influential masters of modern dance such as Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Erik Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham.  When she graduated from Barnard College in 1963, she knew that she wanted to make dance her career.  Twyla Tharp joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company shortly after her college graduation, but cutting her experience in the company short to create her own dance company, the Twyla Tharp Dance Company, two years la...

Ruven Afanador/Courtesy of Ellen Jacobs Associates "I'm Dracula, [the dancers] are the soil and the dance is the coffin." -Twyla Tharp Twyla Tharp is an American dancer and Choreographer who was born Portland, Indiana on July 1, 1941.  She was named after Twila Thornburg, the 'Princess' of the eighty-ninth Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.  Her mother, Lecile Tharp, changed the 'i' to a 'y' because she thought it would look better on a marquee outside a theater.  Twyla Tharp was the eldest of four children, having two twin brothers and a sister, Twanette. When Tharp was only a year and a half old, her mother, who was a piano teacher, began giving her lessons.  Ten years later, in 1951, her family moved to Rialto, California, where her parents build and operated a drive-in movie theater.  Her mother insisted she take dance lessons, along with violin, drums, piano, Flamenco dancing, castanets, baton twirling, and cymbals.  Its safe to say...