I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I’m fascinated by famous creators’ anxieties and how they contend with them. One of my favorites is the esteemed dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp, who’s best known for creating the “crossover ballet,” a mix of ballet and modern dance, and for setting some of her dances to popular music by the Beach Boys, Billy Joel, and others.
Tharp has choreographed 129 dances, 12 television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows, and two figure skating routines. She’s received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, 19 honorary doctorates, etc. In other words, she’s no slouch!
Yet in her 1992 memoir, Push Comes to Shove (also the name of her famous collaboration with Mihail Baryshnikov, which I got to see!), Tharp describes a feeling she’d had at the start of her career. I believe we’d call it imposter syndrome now. She writes, “Trying to find a toehold in dance-making, I shuttled back and forth between my desire to dance and my fear that not only would I embarrass myself as a choreographer but the critics in the audience would say I wasn’t even good enough to be a real dancer.”
And then, in 2003, when Tharp was 62, she published The Creative Habit—exactly 40 years after she first started dancing professionally. Why is the timeframe relevant?
Well, in her book, Tharp lists her most persistent fears about her artistic talent and goals. What strikes me is she doesn’t list them in past tense to indicate they’d once haunted her but she’d overcome them so completely they never again made her doubt herself or her work. Instead, she describes them as present-day concerns. In other words, after four decades (at the time) of an illustrious career, Tharp was still beset by fears and doubts. Here they are:
· People will laugh at me
· Someone has done it before
· I have nothing to say
· I will upset someone I love
· Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind
Sound familiar?!
There are two ways of looking at this (a classic glass-half-empty or glass-half-full choice). We could say to ourselves: What chance do I possibly have of overcoming my anxieties when one of the most accomplished creators in the world couldn’t overcome hers?
Or, we could say to ourselves (and you’ve probably already guessed this would be more constructive): Isn’t it comforting to know one of the most accomplished creators in the world has the very same fears I do, and yet she’s still managed to produce one incredible work after another?
It’s a matter of choosing one’s mindset, isn’t it. Or, of tricking the mind into seeing something in the most encouraging light even if your natural tendency is to go dark.
Tharp has her own very specific approach to dealing with her fears. She writes, “In those long and sleepless nights when I’m unable to shake my fears sufficiently, I borrow a biblical epigraph from [Fyodor] Dostoevsky’s The Demons: ‘I see my fears being cast into the bodies of wild boars and hogs, and I watch them rush to a cliff where they fall to their deaths.’”
I have to admit, I love how gruesome this is. It’s a horrible image, of course, but that’s what makes it so potent—and effective (give it a try!). It reminds me of a common piece of advice to writers who are so attached to what they’ve created, they can’t stand to delete anything: “Kill your darlings.” In this case, the equally essential advice to take to heart is: “Kill your demons.”
Reminder: It’s nearly time for the start of my 8-week summer workshop (on Zoom), “Writing from Personal Experience,” and spots are starting to fill up. Here’s where you can register. Hope to see you there!
Which of Twyla Tharp’s fears do you most relate to? What can you say to yourself to counter it? Thanks for being a Page Fright subscriber and contributing your thoughts!
Interesting article Met. You well articulated the magic bean:
"It’s a matter of choosing one’s mindset, isn’t it. Or, of tricking the mind into seeing something in the most encouraging light even if your natural tendency is to go dark."
She didn't get the pig metaphor correct, but I understand what she meant.