Twyla Tharp: Doing it her way

Along with Bill T. Jones, Twyla Tharp is among a handful of living choreographers who are celebrated in the not-for-profit arts world and in commercial theater. Arguably the most prolific female choreographer in history, Tharp has won almost every major award a pillar of dance can win, including the MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowship and a Tony Award for "Movin' Out," which toured the nation and played in London.

All that success has come from her dogged pursuit of what for her was a fallback passion.

As a teenager growing up in the 1950s in Rialto, Calif., where her parents operated a drive-in theater, Tharp dreamed of making films. But she saw few role models. "How many women were directing films then?" Tharp said in a recent interview from Chicago, where she's working on a new piece. "I said, 'I do not wish to enter an arena where I will be handicapped.'"

Instead, she drew inspiration from dancers and choreographers, including Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. And after graduating from Barnard College, she decided to pursue a life in movement and flight.

"Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement," she said.

Cinematic storytelling

In nearly five decades of working in dance, Tharp has revealed the cinematic storytelling potential of live movement. In the commercial realm, she has mastered a form that really should be called a "dancical" instead of a musical. She pairs modern dance and ballet with popular music to tell mostly wordless stories, attracting wide audiences that might not ordinarily go to strictly dance shows.

"Come Fly Away," her latest project, opens Tuesday at the Ordway Center in St. Paul. It draws on the recordings of Frank Sinatra, and revolves around four couples in a stylish nightclub who fall in and out of love. The score is larded with such hit songs as "My Funny Valentine," "Makin' Whoopee" and "New York, New York."

For Tharp, the show is part of her Sinatra obsession. She first used the music of the Rat Pack crooner nearly 30 years ago with a piece called "Nine Sinatra Songs." Over the years, she has done four Sinatra-themed shows. And she has continued to revise "Come Fly Away" after its Broadway engagement.

But Tharp insists she's not a Type A perfectionist.

"It's unusual for me to do three versions of a show because I'm not satisfied," she said. "But Sinatra is family. And you can't leave family bleeding on the street."

Dance smuggler?

"I tried to bring it into the current moment with a live vocalist, but she was a distraction from Sinatra's voice," Tharp said.

Tharp's shows have generated the same excitement as musicals, which they are. But they feel like a furtive, two-pronged effort: Tharp is smuggling dance into mainstream venues that might not take to it readily, even with the popularity of such TV shows as "Dancing With the Stars."

"I don't use the word smuggle, but I certainly think of what I do as bringing in dance through the back door," she said. "Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms. If a thing moves, it lives. And we have dance all around us."

Tharp wrote a guidebook, "The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life," that forms the basis of a lecture she gives on college campuses. It's a practical guide to pursuing a life in the arts, anchored in her own experience.