Why Creativity's a Habit and Everyone Can Learn It
Choreographer and Broadway hitmaker Twyla Tharp tells us how.
By: Twyla Tharp | Source: NRTA Live & Learn | February 17, 2006
Credit: Andrew H. Walker—Getty Images
Dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp: "Living a creative life has the nourishing power that we normally associate with food, love, and faith."
Tharp, at 38. (Photo © Jack Mitchell)
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A Creative Life Still Unfolding
Just in the past year, Twyla Tharp, 67, has premiered three new works—"Rabbit and Rogue" with the American Ballet Theater on the Metropolitan Opera stage in New York, and "Opus 111" and "Afternoon Ball" with Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) in Seattle. And she was honored at the Kennedy Center for her lifetime contributions.
Tharp talks about the creative process in a conversation with Marcie Sillman, KUOW News, Seattle. Watch Tharp and PNB in rehearsal here.
What's the secret of her productivity? "I've come to believe that being creative is as much a routine as it is a lightning bolt of inspiration," she writes in The Creative Habit, excerpted at right.
A quirky genius, Tharp is the most important choreographer of her generation. She has created more than 135 works for major dance companies around the world and for the Broadway stage, collaborating with Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Read her full biography at the American Academy of Achievement.
Visit Tharp's Web site to find out about upcoming performances of her works.
—updated by the editors, April 2009
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