When Twyla Tharp was born, just months before the United States of America officially entered World War II, the world did not appear to hold a lot of promise for a girl. Her parents, Lecile Margaret Confer Tharp and William Albert Tharp, seemed to be down-to-earth folks in Dunkirk, Indiana. Both came from Quaker families, but they named their eldest after the “Princess” of the Muncie Fair, changing one letter in the spelling because it would look better on a marquee sign that you see outside theaters. Clearly the Tharps had ideas that their newborn might one day be a star. Tharp started with music and dance lesson before she was even two years old.
Tharp spent summers living with her grandparents because her parents were spending part of the year out in California working on opportunities in the post-WWII years. By 1949 or 1950, her parents moved their entire family, then including twin sons and another daughter, to Rialto, California. There they opened Tharp Motors, Tharp Autos, and Foothill Drive-In. The artistic education continued for Tharp, but she was also an avid reader and a good student in the traditional subjects as well. Her childhood was highly scheduled, and throughout her life she has maintained a strict daily schedule. Her three siblings did not have such structured lives, though why is unclear, considering that their father built the California house with spaces for multiple artistic endeavors.
In her teen years, inspired by all the formal dance lessons but also by what she saw on screen working at her parent’s drive-in, Tharp started to develop her own dance moves. She didn’t limit herself to one type of music or formal movements but let the music and the environment inspire her. Yet she doubted her talent, and in 1959, she enrolled in Pomona College in pre-med, thinking she might like to become a psychiatrist.
She found a painter boyfriend, Peter Young, at college, but they were caught kissing on campus, which was a no-no in 1960. Her mother had some social clout and got Tharp transferred across the country to Barnard College, a women’s school, in New York City, where she changed her major to history and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1964. While in NYC, Tharp was able to study under some of the great names of modern dance such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Eugene "Luigi" Lewis, all of whom were using different music and styles of movement, much like Tharp had experimented with as a teenager. Young moved to NYC, too, and the couple were married in 1962, though they later divorced. Tharp’s second marriage was to another artist, Bob Huot. They had one son but also divorced.
Tharp briefly used the surname Young in her career when she was part of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. By the time she formed her own company in 1966, she was divorced and using her birth surname for the brand, Twyla Tharp Dance. She continued her experiments with music and movement, creating “stuffing” techniques that became a feature of contemporary dance. She performed with her company through the mid 1980s before turning to choreography of movies and television shows. But dance is part of Tharp; she returned to performing in 1991, and by the mid-90s she had stepped away from the screen to focus on stage productions. She had already made an impact on society and was given the MacArthur Genius Award in 1992 and received a National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2004.
The Twyla Tharp Dance Company had two stages of life. When Tharp turned her attention to the screen, she closed the company in 1988, working with other dance companies for over a decade and earning worldwide recognition for both her choreography and her performances. That level of fame allowed her to relaunch her troupe, which then toured around the globe from 1999 until 2003. Today her company is called the Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation, though as with many artistic groups, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenge worth taking on.
July 1, 2021, is Tharp’s 80th birthday, and she is still going strong. With numerous awards, grants, and choreography credits, she is an Indiana native who has done every Hoosier proud. She has worked with numerous dance companies as well as founded her own. In the spring of 2021, PBS released a documentary about Tharp’s life, which you may check out online. You may also find books she’s written about her life and dance theory.