Biography

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 that Tharp's well-known tendency to be a workaholic and perfectionist stemmed from her busy childhood schedule.  Tharp began her dance training at Vera Lynn School of Dance in San Bernardino, California.  She began training in ballet when she was twelve.  Luckily, the house that her father build had a playroom with a practice section obtaining floors for tap dancing, ballet barres, and a closet filled with acrobatic mats, batons, ballet shoes, castanets, tutus, and capes.  As Tharp got older, she attended Pacific High School and worked at her family's drive-in movie theater during the summers.  

After graduating Pacific High School, Tharp enrolled at Pomona College, training with Wilson Morelli and John Butler.  Halfway through her sophomore year at Pomona, she transferred to Barnard College in Manhattan, New York.  There, she studied ballet with Igor Schwezoff, then Richard Thomas and his wife, Barbara Fallis at the American Ballet Theatre.  She also studied under Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Eugene 'Luigi' Lewis, the jazz teacher.  She absorbed the Manhattan dance scene by attending every concert that she could.  In 1962, Twyla Tharp married an old classmate from Pomona College, Peter Young.  He was a painter.  Unfortunately, this marriage ended in a divorce.  In 1963, Tharp graduated Barnard College with a degree in art history.

(Barnard College)

Right after graduating, Tharp debuted as a professional dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.  Her name in the program was Twyla Young.  The next year, at age twenty-three, she started her own dance company, the Twyla Tharp Dance Company, and experimented with improvised movement.  For the first five years, the company struggled, but in the early 1970s, she began to get recognition for a technique she calls the 'stuffing' of movement phrases.  Her dances are known for their creativity, wit, and technical precision along with a streetwise nonchalance.  Tharp's work expands the boundaries of ballet and modern dance by incorporating a mixture of different movement forms such as jazz, ballet, boxing, and her own movement inventions.  One of her most creative pieces, The Fugue (1970) was performed by four dancers, set to the percussive beat of their own footsteps coming through microphones that were attached to the floor.  The next year, she choreographed Eight Jelly Rolls to the music of Jelly Roll Morton and The Bix Pieces to music by jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke.  Tharp performed with the company until the mid-1980s, when she decided to take a break from performing to focus on choreography for the company as well as movies and television.   In 1987, the company disbanded temporarily.  

(Eight Jelly Rolls)

Tharp has also worked outside of her company, producing Deuce Coupe (1973) for the Joffrey Ballet.  This piece was set to music by the Beach Boys.   She also choreographed for the American Ballet Theatre, where she worked as Mikhail Baryshnikov's artistic associate in 1989, later transferring her productions to Hubbard Street Dance Company in Chicago and the Boston Ballet.  Tharp's work as also been on Broadway.  Pieces When We Were Young, The Catherine Wheel, Singin' in the Rain, Tharp's dance musical Movin' Out set to the music of Billy Joel, The Times They are A-Changin' set to Bob Dylan, and Come Fly Away performed to Frank Sinatra.  In 1992, Tharp published her autobiography Push Comes to Shove.  Tharp was set to premier her 130th piece at the American Dance Festival's summer season in Durham, South Carolina and New York City.  The Twyla Tharp Company came back in 1999-2003 for a successful global tour.  

(The Times They Are A-Changing poster)

Through out the years, Twyla Tharp has brought so much to the table of dance.  She was able to combine ballet and modern dance into a form that was loved by the world.  Her work was known to be innovative and humorous.  

In total, Twyla Tharp has created over 160 works; 129 dances, twelve television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shoes, and two figure skating routines.  She has also received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, and many many more.  Today, Tharp continues to create and inspire.

(Tharp in rehearsal with ABT dancers)

Works Cited

Afanador, Ruven. “NPR.” NPR, NPR, 14 Nov. 2015.

“Bio.” Bio | Twyla Tharp, www.twylatharp.org/bio.

Staff, NPR. “If Twyla Tharp Is Dracula, Dance Is Her Lifeblood.” NPR, NPR, 14 Nov. 2015, www.npr.org/2015/11/14/455898346/if-twyla-tharp-is-dracula-dance-is-her-lifeblood

“Twyla Tharp.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 2 Apr. 2014, www.biography.com/people/twyla-tharp-9504750.

“Twyla Tharp Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, www.notablebiographies.com/St-Tr/Tharp-Twyla.html.