Twyla Tharp: Speaks Candidly on Creativity and Boxes.

On Tuesday October 13th, Twyla Tharp spoke to a group of USC students, professors, and other members of the USC community at the Bing Theatre on USC's campus through the Visions and Voices Arts & Humanities Initiative. She was promoting her new book, THE CREATIVE HABIT. (Which I will review my signed copy after reading it, look for the review here!) Tharp discussed her long career of dance and choreography. Some highlights include MOVIN' OUT, BARYSHNIKOV by THARP, AMADEUS, and RAGTIME. Tharp has received Emmy's and Tony's and enough "Best Choreography" awards to last a lifetime. Yet she continues on.

She spoke most memorably about how she works alone, and yet with dancers. Tharp must push herself creatively so as to not repeat herself. Even the notion of repeating her works in repertoire is repulsive to her.

Mostly, Tharp's wit and wisdom came through in her speech. She discussed the well-being of American arts as less than stellar. When referring to DANCING WITH THE STARS, Tharp explained that brining the art of ballroom dancing to the masses was great, but the way it is being done, is well, tasteless. She stated sarcastically, "I'm glad!" It seems she fought here with what she is supposed to say: that bringing dance to masses who are otherwise oblivious, is always a good idea. Instead she hints that DWTS is perhaps the wrong way to do this, and maybe even a disservice to the masses and an insult to the dance professionals and the dance world.

Again, Tharp criticizes the pop culture world with reference to Twitter. She describes the need for keeping unfinished work a secret. She claims secrets give the creator energy and spark. If the secret is divulged, it no longer belongs to the creator, but can be misinterpreted, misused, and misguided. Tharp says that Twitter is just a way to divulge secrets, which is counterproductive to the creative process.

Lastly, while Tharp prides herself on being original and never accepting works as they have been done before (for instance, not re-interpreting old, classic musicals, but merely repeating what others have done) she does remind us that we must have a context from which to jump. We must know what has been done before to make something new. We must have an appreciation for the artists, musicians, and historians who have come before us. Tharp, the legendary choreography reminds us that, "to think outside the box, we must start with a box."