Tharp in 2004

This past Monday evening, dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp BC ’63 was at Barnard where she talked dance, her college years, and her book. Anastasiya Vasilyeva was there to report on the talk and how it was received by the students.

Twyla Tharp–an acclaimed dancer, choreographer, and now writer–returned to her old turf of Barnard College to lecture eager fans and students, as well as to conduct a signing for her book, The Creative Habit (2002). She began with a yo-yo and and closed with an advertisement, radiating with pride throughout the talk.

After a brief introduction about her humble education, since at the time Tharp attended school Barnard’s dance classes were just a part of the PE department, Tharp went chronologically through her works. She worked from first to most recent, delineating main points, successes, and failures, and showing brief clips of the dances, meant to match the chapter titles of The Creative Habit. Murmurs filled the Event Oval at the end of the seemingly helpful Q&A session, proclaiming the book to be far more interesting than the lecture. “It contained more art history,” one attendee whispered, “It was more on her creative process.”

The clips progressed from blurry, black and white videos to modern HD, demonstrating the length of her successful career, all from her self-advertised website. Tharp described her humble beginnings as having “No music. No production. No administration. No men.” During the majority of the clips, Tharp narrated the routine, or just counted and nodded along, illustrating her clear memory of these performances, despite the sometimes tens of years that have passed.

By 1971 Tharp had already worked on 29 pieces, and that year she earned her first stage dance: the Eight Jelly Rolls, a charming modern performance by women in mock tuxedos. Although she had worked on choreography for years, Tharp stated that she did not develop confidence in that aspect until her fifties, despite one of her more amusing clips from the 1970s, featuring dancing horses.

At the end of the lecture, Tharp showed an advertisement for new classes of hers in the city which begin October 1st and consist mainly of strength and technique training.

When asked “Why Barnard?” in the Q&A, Tharp displayed a lack of pride by revealing that she only attended the college because of her mother. “My mother insisted I needed a degree from an Ivy League school if I wanted to go east,” she said. Some Barnard girls stirred in their seats. When asked about her application of her art history major to her work with dance, Tharp expressed gratitude towards the college for teaching her the “amazingly rich, repository human thinking” that is art history (though she originally planned to study pre-med and psychology to learn how the brain works).

Tharp’s women’s college education (not that she had much choice at the time) shone when she explained the true reason behind her entirely female company at the beginning of her career. “We wanted to do it all,” she said. “We wanted to do the jumping. We wanted to do the partnering. We wanted to make decisions.”

Some poor reviews echoed in the Barnard dorms that night. When asked to detail the qualities for which she looks in a dancer, for example, Tharp listed: attitude (e.g. the way she puts down her dance bag), beauty, technique, weight, and more. Several hopeful, first-year dancers complained about these harsh criteria. Additionally, Tharp’s confidence appeared as smug to some, particularly due to statements such as “I could look in the mirror, and I could see that I was a good dancer. That I knew.”

While members of the audience revealed mixed reactions when filing out of the Event Oval, from deafening whistles to disappointed frowns, no one seemed to doubt Tharp’s hard work and reputation. Even now, her long and fruitful career continues, and her passion remains strong. “I was always dancing. That’s what I do. I’m still always dancing,” she said. Tharp “never [says] never to nothin’.”

Image via Wikimedia Commons