|
|
Tharp, Twyla ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
|
|
|
|
1 |
PUSH COMES TO SHOVE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Tharp, Twyla
1992 21649 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 From The Critics Publishers Weekly The wit and drive of Tharp's dances also feed her life story, which she tells here with a cool ebullience. Born in rural Indiana, she and her family moved to Southern California, where, still a child, she began studying dance with a visionary fanaticism that also grips her narrative. The book is sometimes very funny--George Balanchine makes an appearance as the Loch Ness monster in one of Tharp's dreams--but it is also earnest as Tharp describes her efforts to make her mark on the seminal modern dance scene of New York City in the 1960s. Tharp tells of her difficult marriage to painter Bob Huot and, elliptically, of their son; documents the life of her dance company; candidly confronts the failure of her production of Singin' in the Rain ; and considers most, though not all, of her dances. A few false notes include fulsome thanks paid to patrons and supporters and an overdetermined finale (``Finally I can feel that my attempts to discover truth through objective distance have linked up with my gut''). Photos not seen by PW. Major ad/promo. (Nov.) Library Journal Dance aficionados have the chance to hear directly from Tharp, a dynamo of inventive pop choreography, regarding her artistic development and personal life. Chapters devoted to the creation of her stunning dances, ``Deuce Coupe'' and ``Push Comes to Shove'' are exhilarating. She depicts a life born of a fascinating mix of Quaker roots and an ambitious mother. Along with her sheer talent, Tharp's tough, gutsy determination enabled astonishing breakthroughs in dance but also masked a touchy insecurity that made her difficult to know. She relates startling anecdotes of unfair demands she made on friends and dancers, whose names read like a Who's Who of the art world. But such harsh self-disclosures make it apparent that she has learned from living. The book ends with a chronology of her work from 1965 to 1992. Essential for performing arts and dance collections.-- Sheila Riley, Smi Bantam Books 0553073060 / 9780553073065
Hardcover AS NEW CONDITION New York
Price:
19.31 USD
|
|
Add to Shopping Cart Now (Easily removed if you change your mind!) |
|
|
|
