I'm fascinated by creative people in other arts than music. Since
I'm married to a visual artist (who loves music, luckily), I often get
cross-pollination of ideas from another viewpoint (and she has good
ears, too!).
Twyla Tharp
is a choreographer who's done work that ranges from her own company,
choreography for other companies (premieres of 16 of her works at the
American Ballet Theatre), Broadway (particularly her successful show
based on Billy Joel songs), and film (she worked with Milos Forman on Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus).
Her underlying point is that creativity is a habit, a product of
preparation and effort, and she then explores the exercises she does to
create ideas.
She begins each day going to the gym. As she tells us, rituals of
preparation are important to the creative artist—the habits we build.
She says the ritual is not the exercises she does, the ritual is the
cab. "The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the
ritual. . . . It's vital to establish some rituals—automatic but
decisive patterns of behavior—at the beginning of the creative process,
when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up,
or going the wrong way." She gives examples of different artists'
rituals, including Igor Stravinsky, who played a Bach fugue at the piano
every day when he entered his studio.
A list of chapter headings is vague, but will give you a few ideas:
- Your Creative DNA
- Harness Your Memory
- Before You Can Think out of the Box, You Have to Start with a Box
- Scratching
- Accidents Will Happen
- Spine
- Skill
- Ruts and Grooves
- An "A" in Failure
- The Long Run
As "recreative" artists we may think that the kind of
creativity needed by a choreographer, visual artist, playwright, author,
composer, or architect has little to do with what we do. But we have to
"re-engineer" the compositions we perform, imagine them through the
composer's mind and spirit. Programming is a mightily creative act (or
should be)! And, although I've spoken of rehearsal technique as craft,
it is also art when we're at our best. With one of my choirs right now
I've needed to re-think aspects of how I normally rehearse—and the
creative energy I put into planning those rehearsals will ultimately
affect what I do in other ones. There are so many ways in which
creativity is at the heart of what we do. Following a great creative
artist such as Twyla Tharp through her process, seeing her "toolbox,"
and getting inside her mind is enormously helpful.
I hope you get a chance to enjoy and learn from it!
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