by Twyla Tharp
I maintain control of the process by envisioning all of my projects as circles within circles on a piece of paper with their deadlines scrawled within the borders of each. Each circle is a self-contained unit, separate, distinct, isolated—like the popular Russian nesting dolls—but each rubs up against and enfolds the other circles, too. After all, if I’m working on several things at once, they inevitably compete with one another. They clamor not only for my time but for my undivided attention.
If I follow my circles and match things up with my calendar, the progression begins to make sense. I look at the concentric circles and tell myself, “I can do this.” This routine bolsters my faith in myself. Which instills confidence. Which provides momentum.
Most creative endeavors don’t allow precise planning, but it’s still vital to have some sense of how long something is going to take you. One successful commercial writer advises people beginning their first novels to allow a year to create a first draft, writing a page a day, and another year to make it good. At first glance, the thought of investing two years in a project is daunting, but a page a day is a manageable output. Also, it’s nice to know you’re accumulating a first draft. You’ll get to fix it later.
Think of all the things you want to accomplish in the next few months. How much do they overlap? Do they conflict? Draw your own circles. Make the circles big or little depending on the importance of the task. Use this method for prioritizing your time. Any approach that renews your self-confidence and keeps you moving forward is worth cultivating and repeating.
26 Take Away a Skill
Take away a skill, a vital one. Would you still be able to create? How would you overcome the loss? How would you compensate? What skill would come to the fore to rescue your work?
Business executives run through this type of hypothetical exercise all the time as a way to establish their organization’s strengths and preparedness. They’re always imagining what-if scenarios in which the company loses something. For example, “What if we lost Executive X to the competition? What would happen to his clients and customers? Would they stay with us or go with him? What are we prepared to do about that?” These are useful because they reveal the powers the company has in reserve. It raises the question, of course, as to why these capabilities have been held back in the first place. But that’s the value of thinking hypothetically: It unleashes new talents.
It also forces you to face reality. Jack Welch, when he became CEO of General Electric, had one of his first meetings with the people who ran the company’s nuclear reactor business. The executives were forecasting growth in the division based on sales of three or four very expensive nuclear reactors a year. Welch didn’t see it that way. Politicians and citizens were losing their enthusiasm for nuclear power; demand for more plants was vanishing. He told his executives, “You’re not facing reality. You’re running this business as if you have customers for your reactors. You don’t. The customers don’t exist.” He forced them to come up with a plan for a business that doesn’t build and sell new reactors but rather services the ones they had already built and sold. He forced them to create a new service business that dealt with the facts as they were, not as they wanted them to be. That’s valuable thinking: Take away new customers. What have you got left?
This happened to me, not hypothetically, when I broke my ankle working on the Milos Forman film of Hair. It was the first time in my life that I had lost my mobility, the first time that I would have to create dance in some manner other than on my body. It was the first time that I wouldn’t be able to show the dancers what I wanted but rather would have to tell them. That’s a huge difference for a choreographer. I managed to get through it; for eight weeks I went into the studio and forced myself to visualize what I wanted and then translate it into language that the dancers would understand. I didn’t enjoy it, but I discovered two new skills: One, I could verbalize my ideas better than I’d thought I could. Two, I had a talent for refusing to be defeated by reality.
In this regard, my heroes are those who’ve prevailed over far greater losses than I’ve ever had to face.
Henri Matisse was bedridden in his home in the south of France with only the use of his arms and imagination in his final years. But he wasn’t going to stop working. His mind wouldn’t rest. So he came up with a new way of working: paper cutouts. These exquisitely pure creations, out of the most childlike material, are some of my favorite works by Matisse. They are the essence of his art. I doubt he would have ever made them if some of his other skills had not been taken away.
Alicia Alonzo, the great Cuban dancer, was blind for much of her career, but she still performed well into her seventies (the age is just as remarkable as the lack of sight). She could always tell where she was onstage by feeling the heat from the stage lights.
The giant in this category of course is Beethoven, who composed many of his greatest works after he lost his hearing. Freed from the distractions of the new, he reconnected with the ideas and themes that had moved him in his youth, to mine the richness of his classical heritage. We can take great inspiration from this.
Pick one of your skills from the list you made in “Take Inventory of Your Skills”. Now remove it. What’s left? What can you accomplish without it? What does it say about your work habits, your art, your potential?
And if you can do without it, why haven’t you?
Chapter 10
ruts and grooves
It’s going to happen
sometimes: Despite all the good habits you’ve developed, the preparation rituals, the organizational tools, the techniques for scratching out pre-ideas and actual ideas, there will come a time when your creativity fails you. You stare at the canvas, the screen, the keyboard, the empty room—and it refuses to meet your eyes. It looks away as if it’s ashamed of you. You may as well be painting on shards of broken glass. Your screen shows nothing but wavy lines. Your fingers slip off the keyboard, never getting traction. The room turns dark and cold, and someone is locking the door behind you.
You are in a rut.
When I’m working, I’m always monitoring my momentum, always asking, “Is this piece moving forward or staying in place? Am I in a rut or a groove?” A rut is when you’re spinning your wheels and staying in place; the only progress you make is in digging yourself a deeper rut. A groove is different: The wheels turn and you move forward effortlessly. It can mean all the difference in the world.
Let’s be clear about what is and is not a rut. A rut is not writer’s block (or any other creative block). When you’re in a rut, at least you know your motor is running. Writer’s block means your engine has shut down and the tank is empty. Being blocked is most often a failure of nerve, with only one solution: Do something—anything.
A rut is more like a false start. The engine’s kicked over, you’ve picked your destination, and you’re moving. A rut is the part of the journey where you’re spinning your wheels, spitting out mud behind you, splattering other people, and not going anywhere. You know you’re in a rut when you annoy other people, bore your collaborators and supporters, fail to challenge yourself, and get the feeling that the world is moving on while you’re standing still. You may also feel that you’ve been here before; déjà vu, with some flop sweat on the side, is a sure sign of a rut. Perhaps the surest sign is a feeling of frustration and relief when you’re done (“Boy, I’m glad that’s over!”) rather than anticipatory pleasure (“I can’t wait to get back here tomorrow.”).
Ruts form for all sorts of reasons.
A rut can be the consequence of a bad idea. You shouldn’t have started the project in the first place.
A rut can be the end product of bad timing. For some reason you are out of sync with the world. You can have the brightest vision with the most mind-blowing idea, but if the world isn’t ready for it you can spin your wheels for years.
A rut can form because of bad luck or circumstances conspiring against you.
More often than not, I’ve foun
d, a rut is the consequence of sticking to tried and tested methods that don’t take into account how you or the world has changed. It’s like your mother serving you the same breakfast you loved as a child. You push the meal away half-eaten and she says, “But you always loved Cocoa Puffs and pork sausage.” That was then, this is now.
Variations on this theme occur in all aspects of your life. It’s staffers at a company walking glumly into the 3:00 P.M. Tuesday meeting long after the weekly gathering has lost its reason for being. That’s meeting rut. A shrewd manager will notice the dispirited group, ask “Does anybody want to be here?,” and cancel the meeting until further notice.
It’s a salesperson sticking with the same sales pitch or a company clinging to its advertising approach long after their customers have changed their buying habits. That’s selling rut. You either change the pitch or find new customers.
It’s a family going on the same summer vacation year after year, even after the kids have grown and developed other interests: That’s vacation rut. There’s a lot to be said for tradition, but there’s a lot to be said for examining it, too. If the trip bores some of the interested parties, alert parents test out a new vacation—or let the kids stay home.
“We’ve always done it this way” is not a good enough reason to keep doing it if it isn’t working. When an otherwise smart habit or ritual loses its potency and you continue doing it, you’re in a rut.
I noticed this when my improvising in the studio began having a curious effect on my dancers. More and more of our rehearsals were routine and dull, going nowhere. The danger and excitement had faded. That’s rehearsal rut.
Eventually I realized it was me, not them. When I was young I would work out my ideas on myself for an hour or two each morning before the dancers showed up. Then I’d try my ideas on them. That’s fine when you’re thirty-five years old and in the best shape of your life; you can blast away on the dance floor for three or four hours every day, and something good will certainly come out of it. But it doesn’t work as well twenty years later. It slowly dawned on me that my body wasn’t as prolific as it used to be. In my fifties, I had either shed some power or, to put it another way, acquired physical limitations. The range of my movements shrunk. My stamina was diminished. As a result, the ideas I developed on my body no longer challenged my dancers. They were professionals, of course, so they’d do what I asked them to do, but I could see a desultory attitude creeping into the ease with which they tossed off the steps. That’s not the effect I’m after; I want my dancers to grab my ideas and abandon common sense. I want them to give something of their own and to push everything to the edge.
So I changed my work habits. I brought in young talented assistants and talked more, danced less. I don’t want to paint a picture of myself as an invalid who can’t put three steps together without sagging into a heap on the floor. I still improvise alone before rehearsal, but I no longer look to create primarily from my steps. It’s a transition any physical director of a certain age has to make—from being a demonstrator to becoming an instructor. I’m not going to lie to you; it hurts to come to that realization. I became a choreographer because I longed to dance, and nobody was making the kinds of dances I felt inside me. It was brutal to recognize that my body could no longer take me where my mind wanted to go. But I surely owed it to my dancers to turn onto myself the same brutal honesty with which I viewed their efforts. You can’t make this kind of transition if you don’t see the need for it, and you won’t see the need if you don’t analyze all your work habits. When you’re in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.
Dealing with ruts is a three-step process of seeing, believing, and repairing.
First, you have to see the rut.
If you’re like me, you might not always know you’re in a rut until it’s too late. This is particularly true when you’re creating on your own (at least I have the benefit of dancers giving me daily feedback, letting me know when things aren’t working). You may be humming along with your novel, writing every day, and then twelve months later you find you have four hundred pages that do not make sense. You have to make a habit of reviewing your efforts along the way, seeing where you’ve been and where you are to make sure you’re still heading in the right direction, if any.
Second, admit you’re in a rut.
This is harder than it sounds. It requires an admission that you’ve made a mistake. People don’t always do that. They’ll even deny that they’re in denial. Think about the last time your talents failed you on a project. Did you step back and admit it? Did you pause and wait for a better day? Or did you commit the creative equivalent of throwing good money after bad, trying to tough it out, hoping that time and sheer effort would pay off? It’s a harsh thing to do, and a bit ironic: The more disciplined you are, the less you’ll be willing to cut your losses and stop the insanity. Truth is, all you’re doing is deepening your rut.
The third step is getting out of the rut.
This is the hard part. Knowing and admitting a problem are not the same as solving it. But executing a solution is also the fun part, because the solution saves you and gets you moving again.
When optimism turns to pessimism during the creative process, you are in a serious, dangerous rut. So serious that it can become the mother rut—depression. Forget spinning your wheels; the wheels have come off the wagon. Some people work their way out of it. Some people take a rest. Some people need the help of a doctor. I don’t have the cure for this one.
Often, it’s not the work alone that triggers the shift to pessimism. It can easily be something around you, too. Think: What’s happened? Is it trouble with a spouse or partner? Money? Health? The evening news? Distractions? The weather? What’s making you hate the material you’re producing? If it’s something in your environment, the simplest solution is change your environment. If it’s a micro-rut, a momentary stall as you try to get from one part to another during the day’s work, change your scenery. Get out of the house. Stare at the sky. Grab a hoe and tend to your garden. Take a walk. Grab lunch with a friend. Call it a day. Do something that gets you out of the vehicle with the spinning wheels.
One time, after a particularly grueling day of business heartbreaks and creative headaches, I built a fire in my living room fireplace. As I’ve said, I take great comfort and solace in heat. Heat is practically a sacrament for me, and watching a fire is one of life’s miraculous pleasures. Fire has fabulous movement and spatial invention. It is constantly altering, never repeating itself. The flame changes shape, color, height, and depth. Tinker with the fire by adding a log and it veers off at different angles, sometimes swelling into a vertical pyre, other times collapsing into a horizontal twinkle.
The fire show kept me busy for two hours as the day turned into night. I was enveloped in a world of flickering light and thermal pleasure. Campfires have always encouraged the telling of stories, and I began to tell stories to myself. Answers to work problems began to march out of the flames, saying, “Try this beginning and then try this one next.” Then I lit candles to enrich the sacrament; I would have released fireflies if they were to be found.
Next I ran a hot bath. Martha Graham liked to boast that she had done her floor series on the shores of all the world’s oceans; when I knew her late in her life, she was very arthritic and soaked in hot Epsom salts every day before coming to the studio. Alone in the tub, in another medium of exquisite heat, I began to relax, breathe easily, lose track of time, and shelter myself from invasive ideas. I was where I needed to be, on my way to becoming a complete blank.
Leonardo da Vinci said, “Where there is heat there is life.” That vitality is the luxurious reward that heat provides me. Unlike most luxuries, though, it is abundant and virtually free. In its embrace, particularly after a day of despondency, I feel capable of anything.
If you find yourself caught in a bigger rut, what you really need is a new idea, and the way to get it is by giving yourself a
n aggressive quota for ideas. A tough manager will have realistic quotas for his employees that he keeps to himself and aggressive “stretch” quotas, anywhere from ten percent higher to a lot more, which he imposes on his staff. If his people miss the stretch numbers but exceed the realistic goals, he’s happy. If he’s a superb manager, he knows how far they can stretch without breaking.
I conduct an exercise along these lines when I lecture at colleges. I’ll go backstage and come back with a found object. The last time I did this I returned with a wooden stool. Then I gave the audience a challenge: You’ve got two minutes to come up with sixty uses for the stool.
A lot of interesting things happen when you set an aggressive quota, even with ideas. People’s competitive juices are stirred. Instead of panicking they focus, and with that comes an increased fluency and agility of mind.
People are also forced to suspend critical thinking. To meet the quota, they put their internal critic on hold and let everything out. They’re no longer choking off good impulses.
The most interesting thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a consistent order to the quality of ideas. You’d think the sixtieth idea would be the most lame, but for my purposes, which are to trigger leaps of imagination, it’s often the opposite. To meet the quota, people begin by listing the most obvious uses for a stool, such as sitting on it, standing on it, or burning it as fuel. These are the least original ideas. After that come the more imaginative uses—a doorstop, an anchor, a weapon, a projectile in a riot, as raw material for sculpture, as a surface to drum on. Then the final ideas come straggling in—as a surface for gymnastics, as a tool for taming lions, as a dancing partner. The closer they get to the sixtieth idea, the more imaginative they become—because they have been forced to stretch their thinking. It’s the same arc every time: the first third of the ideas are obvious; the second third are more interesting; the final third show flair, insight, curiosity, even complexity, as later thinking builds on earlier thinking. When you start with a stool, it’s easy to think of a chair; only after you see the chair can you think about it as a protective barrier between you and a lion. (I’m not knocking first ideas. They’re often the best. But they’re rarely the most radical stretch, and that’s the purpose of this exercise.)