Twyla tharp interview with god
Rachel Syme interviews Twyla Tharp about her dogged work ethic, not falling in love with Baryshnikov, and what's lost and gained by making.
Do you believe in God? TT: I would not go there.!
One day back in 1967, Twyla Tharp and her dancers were rehearsing at Judson Church, then New York's high temple of the downtown avant-garde, when a janitor indignantly asked how they could dance on a Sunday.
Tharp, ever righteous in the cause of art, replied by asking how dare he disturb a bunch of broads doing God's work?
Almost 30 years later, plowing through a giant steak at a restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Tharp has lost none of her belief that dancing is divine work, as irresistible and relentless a calling as any saint's.
"Bottom line," says Tharp, now one of the best-known choreographers of this century, "there's nothing else [dancers] can do."
"The reason I became a dancer is because I asked myself at a certain point, 'What do you do best?' And I said, 'Dance.' And then I said, 'Well, that's a stupid choice to make, there's no career to be made in dance, this is reall