Word: tharp
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CHOREOGRAPHER Twyla Tharp is New York's new superstar. The Loeb caught her February 5-7 at the tail end of a series of Tharp profiles in The New York Times Magazine and The Village Voice. As a result, Tharp's style is now publicly well-defined: snatches of pop dance and everyday gesture emerging from tightly-paced choreography; cool, aloof dancers tossing off precise wiggles, shimmies and shrugs. It adds up to a complex choreographic vision...
...Twyla Tharp has been seriously watching movies starting from the tune that she worked as a carhop in drive-in theaters owned by her parents. A native of Indiana, she was named after a Midwestern pig-calling contestant known as Twila. "My mother thought Twyla would look good on a theater marquee," explains Tharp. Her ambitious mother also laid out a marathon course of piano, violin, viola, drum, baton-twirling, ballet and tap-dancing lessons that occupied Tharp's childhood. It all paid...
...very aggressive bunch of broads doing God's work," she recalls. "Bit by bit we felt it was O.K. for audiences to enjoy us." In 1970 a man was added to the troupe, which was gaining a reputation in the avant-garde of dance. Impatient with foundation questionnaires, Tharp's replies were typically blunt: "I'm sorry, I write dances, not application forms. Send me the money. Love, Twyla...
...City Center Jeffrey Ballet invited Tharp to put on Deuce Coupe, a freestyle piece matching up pas de bourrees and the boogaloo to the sun-and-surf music of the Beach Boys...
...boundaries of dance. "In every good work of art there is a huge story, whether it is a Matisse cutout at the end of his life or a portrait at the beginning. The story has to do with guts and vitality." In a way, of course, that defines Tharp's art as well as her life...