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Push Comes to Shove: An Autobiography

by Twyla Tharp

3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 · rating details · 79 ratings · 6 reviews

An electrifying performer and one of the greatest choreographers of her time, Twyla Tharp is also an intensely private woman whose supremely inventive dances have spoken for her, revealing a spirit full of joy and pain, contradictions and questions - and answers. Now, in her own words, Twyla Tharp offers a rare and provocative glimpse into the mind and heart behind her fam An electrifying performer and one of the greatest choreographers of her time, Twyla Tharp is also an intensely private woman whose supremely inventive dances have spoken for her, revealing a spirit full of joy and pain, contradictions and questions - and answers. Now, in her own words, Twyla Tharp offers a rare and provocative glimpse into the mind and heart behind her famously deadpan face. Much more than a dance book, Push Comes to Shove is the story of a woman coming to terms with herself as daughter, wife and lover, mother, artist. A child of Indiana Quaker country, Twyla Tharp was traumatically uprooted to California when her stage-ambitious mother built a drive-in movie theater. Soon Twyla was studying piano, violin, flamenco, drums, French, baton twirling, tap, classical ballet...But it was in adolescence - tangling with a rattlesnake in the California desert and observing overheated couples in the backs of cars - that she began to learn the powers of the body and the erotic mysteries of dance. In New York her raw talent came under the influence of such giants as Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, and George Balanchine. But Tharp fought to find her own vision as an artist. In the process she created a new vocabulary of movement: quirky rebellious, sexy, comic - a daring and defiant marriage of Jelly Roll Morton, Bach, the modern dance, and classical ballet. Her collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jerome Robbins, director Milos Forman, and David Byrne of Talking Heads built bridges between ballet audiences and fans of popular culture. Now with a stunning accompaniment of photographs by Richard Avedon and others, she reveals the development of the Tharp style - the rendering of order out of chaos, and chaos out of conventional order - that won critical acclaim in such works as Deuce Coupe, The Fugue, Push Comes to Shove, In the Upper Room, and the movies Hair and Amadeus. But her spectacular success did not come without personal anguish. In ...more

Hardcover , 376 pages

Published November 1st 1992 by Bantam (first published 1992)

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May 24, 2010 Surreysmum rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1993 , biography , dance , owned

[These notes were made in 1993:]. I read this very recently published autobiography on the weekend before going to see Tharp and Baryshnikov perform in their touring show Cutting Up. I was glad I did, for it gave me a stronger sense of the personality behind the eclectic creativity I saw on stage that night, and also of the history and nature of the partnership of Tharp and Baryshnikov, surely (if one looks at their beginnings) one of history's more unlikely creative pairings. The book is lavish [These notes were made in 1993:]. I read this very recently published autobiography on the weekend before going to see Tharp and Baryshnikov perform in their touring show Cutting Up. I was glad I did, for it gave me a stronger sense of the personality behind the eclectic creativity I saw on stage that night, and also of the history and nature of the partnership of Tharp and Baryshnikov, surely (if one looks at their beginnings) one of history's more unlikely creative pairings. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs, both personal and performance, as well as some studio portraits by greats like Avedon. I am reminded however, as I look at them, how little the apparent candour of the snapshot actually reveals about Tharp's particular brand of dance, which is all in the movement and not at all in the pose. (It is part of Baryshnikov's particular genius that he manages to 'stop-action' Tharp's choreography as he dances, but even photographs of Baryshnikov dancing Tharp suggest only undisciplined movement without line of any sort. The reality only emerges fully in live action or videotape). Is it being perhaps a little precious to suggest that this autobiography shares some of the same characteristics - that its apparent candour, and there is plenty of it, does not in fact reveal the true nature of the autobiographicand, because it is a futile attempt to stop in midstream something which reveals itself only in motion? In any case, one is grateful for the details and the candour, however little they throw light on questions one has wanted to ask. I was particularly interested to see, for instance, that Tharp's family ran a drive-in cinema, that they were, at best, an unconventional and unstable family (her twin siblings developed a twin language), and that she herself started her career as an avant-garde "purist", making mathematical patterns not intended to be comprehensible to the much-
despised audience. Though she takes a stab at it, even Tharp herself does not seem to be able to explain how she moved to the opposite pole of populist dance. Possessed of far more decency and discretion than Gelsey Kirkland, she nonetheless cannot resist chronicling the first sexual encounter with Baryshnikov: "In my room, I found that the famous muscles I had only seen tensed in performance possessed an extraordinary softness. As we explored each other's bodies, the confidence we had as dancers let us invent transitions that flowed as smoothly as well-drafted duets... " (p. 208). One gets the impression, though she does not say much about it, that the relationship settled fairly early on into one of mutual respect and affection, as Baryshnikov's passions moved on to other objects. In any case, this book is a useful exercise in placing the Baryshnikov collaborations into perspective in a much longer career. Tharp's affection and admiration for the members of her company, particularly the female members, is sincere and so openly expressed as to border on the sensual if not the sexual. I find it interesting that it was only after she'd been in business for some time that she allowed men into her company, and even then they appear to have played somewhat subsidiary parts. This may have been somewhat in reaction against the male-dominated modern dance world in which she served her apprenticeship (Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor). The book itself is very well-presented - in addition to the illustrations, it has a good index and a full chronology of Tharp's work, and it has obviously been well-edited for language and typos.
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Jun 18, 2009 Chelsea rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dance , autobio-bio-memoir , favorites

one my favorite books in the whole world. Twyla's journey from young overachiever to creating her own dance company. Who she worked with, her personal ups and downs, her lovers! But most importantly, she describes her artistic process and many of the early dances she created. I loved getting her thoughts on these works and the logic or illogic of them. Her love of a range of dance styles and how that mixed with the current anti-aesthetic of the time, Judson Dance and all that. I will re-read thi ...more

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Jul 29, 2009 Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just goes to show that you can do anything you want to do, with enough perseverence. You may carry around a lot of baggage, but who doesn't?

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Sep 04, 2010 Joann rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography , non-fiction

Twyla Tharp is my favorite choreographer, and I enjoyed reading her autobiography.

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Oct 03, 2009 LB rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

narcissistic dancers.

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Dec 22, 2012 Ron Banister rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Real life - Real hard

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About Twyla Tharp

Twyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer. She has won Emmy and Tony awards, and currently works as a choreographer in New York City.

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Books by Twyla Tharp

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

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