The Creative Habit

TWYLA THARP

Reviewed by Todd

My love for big, crazy ideas certainly shades my view, but after reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, I am certain corporate innovation doesn’t hold a candle to the challenges of artistic creation. And before you start listing all of the differences, I’d ask you to stop and consider the last marketing campaign or machinery upgrade you were involved with. When you were done, did you measure the results based on how much sales went up and how it compared to your competitors’ results . . . or whether it was on par with a Picasso painting or Edison invention? Apple is clearly doing the latter, and maybe it is time for you to do the same.

“Scratching” is the term Tharp, one of America’s greatest choreographers, assigns to the initial, exploratory steps of finding a new idea. The primordial matter in which to scratch comes from what we experience—recalling early memories, conversing with friends, observing nature. “Scratch among the best and you will automatically raise the quality of ideas you uncover.” For Tharp, the music she chooses makes or breaks the dance she creates, and Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Haydn are her first stops. The companions you choose to accompany you while you scratch shape the entire creative process.

Once those initial creative ideas take flight, you need some way to capture them. For Tharp, every project begins with a simple cardboard box. Everything she acquires during the process goes in the box, much as a musician might capture a melody on composition paper or an illustrator a silhouette in a sketchbook. Whatever the device, the inspirations are gathered in a place without confining the creativity itself. The first item in each of her boxes is a blue index card stating the goal for the project. For her Broadway show Movin’ Out, one box became eleven boxes. The index cards said “‘tell a story’” and “‘make dance pay for the dancers,’” and items like Billy Joel’s entire discography, a copy of the film Saturday Night Fever, and a macramé vest filled the boxes.

Tharp discusses creativity using a gracefulness drawn from her career as a choreographer. A natural extension of her eye for art, the book’s design is elegant, with oversize text filling oversize pages. Narrative is followed by exercises—more parallels with her life as a dancer. The material throughout reveals more about the author, the creative process, and—we hope—the participating reader. Tharp ends her book with a sense of satisfaction about the life she has chosen: “When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love, and faith.”

“Applying algorithms to creativity is like biochemists trying to formulate the chemistry of love. It takes some of the romance out of the enterprise.”

Dan Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, says “The new MBA is the MFA [Master of Fine Arts],” and he is right. Artists have long struggled with constant and consistent idea generation for centuries longer than us corporate types. It is about time we use such methods of creativity to enrich our every project. Before the next blank screen or empty page finds you, get a copy of The Creative Habit and keep it by your bedside long after you’ve devoured it the first time. TS

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Simon & Schuster, Paperback 2006, ISBN 9780743235273

WHERE TO NEXT? Here for what happens to industry when inspiration is found Here for how business needs practice too | EVEN MORE: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield; A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink; Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott