Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp

in conversation with Alastair Macaulay

Kenneth Tharp: Although I danced from the age of five, I don’t mean to say at the age of five, I always knew I was going to be a dancer. It was always part of my life. And I think it was when I got to the age of, well, what’s now GCSE, but, you know, in my day O’ Levels, when I got to that year and I actually had to cut down on the number of classes I did per week in order to give a bit more time to my studies, I think that process made me go – I don’t like doing less – I want to do more. I would say also around that time I did see London Contemporary Dance Theatre for the first time or shortly after that, I think in 1976. In 1977, I think it was, I auditioned at The Royal Ballet School. Technically, I was two months too old. There were people like Iain Webb in my audition. He’s now director of Sarasota Ballet, and Michael O’Hare, as we know, who had a great career in Birmingham Royal Ballet. Yeah, I didn’t get in, and I was very upset for a week, mainly because I think I already sort of knew from, I suppose having my eyes opened and realising that there was no evidence of any dancers of colour in The Royal Ballet. I think I almost knew without anyone having to tell me that I wouldn’t be destined for that company no matter how good I was.

But I did want to go for the training. I wanted to go for the training. I wanted the best training possible. I wanted to be taught by male teachers and be with other male dancers.

Alastair Macaulay: When you auditioned for the school, you were how old?

Kenneth Tharp: I think I was 17 years and something months. So, I think I was technically I was a couple of months too old. But anyway, I didn’t get in. I was very upset for a week. But around that time, I had seen the dancers from London Contemporary Dance Theatre for the second time. Actually, I saw them for the second time in 1978, and by that time I’d already got into The Place. And I remember that one of the dancers in the contemporary dance theatre in May, I think it was May 1978, came and taught a master class at our ballet school, and I was given the job of collecting her from the stage door of the Arts Theatre. And I was taken downstairs, and I remember seeing Namron laid out, crashed out, obviously between a matinée and evening show. But I took Charlotte back to our school…

Alastair Macaulay: Charlotte Kirkpatrick?

Kenneth Tharp: Exactly. So, Charlotte came and taught this amazing masterclass and I’ve got it in my diary at the time. And I, you know I wrote about it at the time how amazing it was to see the company for the second time, knowing that I was going to The Place and to be taught this masterclass. By the way, before my audition at The Place, I had I think I took a crash course in contemporary dance at Parkside Community School with a guy called Yoshimori Moto who had trained at The Place, as it was called then – London School of Contemporary Dance. Now it’s London, Contemporary Dance School. And I did a five-day course with him, and I remember him saying with his Japanese inflection that, ‘a contraction is like a laugh’. And he said, ‘You don’t go, ha ha ha’. He said, thrusting his chest forward ‘you go, ha ha ha’, he said, concaving his chest. So that was my initiation into contemporary dance. I have those five classes before auditioning and that was all I had before I went to The Place as a student.

Alastair Macaulay: And was that a [Martha] Graham class?

Kenneth Tharp: It was a Graham based class. Yeah. And Charlotte unfortunately is no longer with us. It’s about ten years since she died. And she told me a few months before she died that after that particular class she taught at my ballet school, she went back to Robert Cohan, the founding artistic director of the Contemporary Dance Theatre, and said, ‘Bob, I’ve just seen this amazing young man. He’s coming to the school in the autumn and you’re going to take him into the company one day.’ So, it still chokes me to think about that.

Alastair Macaulay: Gosh, so you came to the school.

Kenneth Tharp: Yes.

Alastair Macaulay: Who teaches you and are you there for one year, two years?

Kenneth Tharp: Three years. It was a three-year course. This was prior to it becoming a degree course. One got a professional diploma in those days. It was a three-year full-time course. I had for the whole of my first year, I had for contemporary arts, had a combination of Jane Dudley, who, as you know, came from the Martha Graham company. And I knew Jane by reputation before I even entered the place. I was already somewhat in awe and fear of her. I also was taught by Noemí Lapzeson, who was a member of the Contemporary Dance Theatre and also a former Graham company dancer, and they were both amazing teachers in their own way. Those were the contemporary teachers.

Alastair Macaulay: And they both taught Graham technique?

Kenneth Tharp: They did. Yeah, both their own version of it. And Jane Dudley also taught once a week something called a movement class, which was based on some of the knowledge that she had learned early on in her career from one of the American modern dance pioneers called Hanya Holm.

Alastair Macaulay: I was just about to bring that up because I had discovered recently that she was a Hanya Holm dancer before she joined Graham.

Kenneth Tharp: And so, we explored all sorts of things with Jane once a week, which were in a way not to do with technique, but were about your commitment, about your presence. I remember in the first class we had to do something like step into a circle and just say your name. And as simple and as basic as that sounds, just doing that with conviction was already a challenge. And if you thought you weren’t giving it sufficient, she’d say, ‘Don’t give me this excuse me for living.’ You know, Jane challenged people. And I think, as a generalisation, some people responded to that challenge in a way that they could deal with. And other people, I think somehow some people, I think, felt slightly squashed. Before we lose Hanya Holm, I just want to share… that I think before the end of my first year in the Easter, 1979, I was one of ten students from The Place to go up to Bretton Hall. And as part of Rudolf Laban’s centenary, we spent ten days in the studio with Hanya Holm. The only connection I had to Hanya Holm was this – that I discovered that she was the choreographer of the first, I think, theatre piece or musical I ever saw, which was Kiss Me, Kate – I think when I was about three, very, very, very young. Anyway, we spent this amazing ten days in the studio with Hanya Holm exploring, you know, spatial configurations and using elastics.

We’d sometimes spent half an hour just doing pliés. And I know I’ve got room to show you in the studio, but I’ll show you afterwards, Alastair. She taught us how to walk in a circle and, basically, I don’t know if anyone can imagine it just by saying in words, but if you put one foot parallel and one foot slightly turned out and just keep walking with that same configuration, you know, the more you turn the foot out, the tighter and the smaller circle you will do. It means that you could walk a circle with your eyes closed. Perfect circle. So yeah, Hanya Holm. Brilliant!

Alastair Macaulay: Tell me more about other teachers you had at The Place.

Kenneth Tharp: We had an amazing Tai chi teacher, Gerda Pytt Geddes, who had… was Norwegian… had been part of the resistance in the Second World War, I think was unique. And I think as a Western person going to China, I think was the first person to bring this long style back. The reason she ended up teaching at The Place was thanks to the founder, Robin Howard, who had been down to the One World Festival held at The Diorama in Regent’s Park and had come across Pytt there. I think he felt instinctively, not as a dance person himself but as someone who, you know, gave his life to dance, or the latter part of his life, to dance, that somehow this particular discipline of mind, body integration, Tai chi would somehow complement what we did as dancers. And I think he was right.

Alastair Macaulay: You’ve already touched on two of the figures at the place, the London Contemporary School and Company. Robin Howard and Robert Cohan. Yes. Can you describe them?

Kenneth Tharp: I wish I brought it with me to show you, but I still have my little red exercise notebook from the first day I arrived at The Place. And in the front of that notebook is my timetable. On the next pages, there is some notes about the… I am getting into question, by the way! On the next pages there’s the London Contemporary Theatre’s season at Sadler’s Wells. And what was notable is that, in 1978, September 1978, it was a three-week season. There were 18 different pieces and seven different programmes. I mean, for those dancers, you know, a small company of a maximum ever, I think 21, having 18 different pieces at one time in the rep[ertoire], plus a gala and a lecture-dem[onstration]. That was extraordinary. And if I turn to the back page of my notebook, there is a page that just says Robin Howard at the top. So, I met him on my first day at the place in September 1978, and he sat and talked to us, and he talked about, um, I suppose, the values of The Place.

Alastair Macaulay: Do you remember what those were?

Kenneth Tharp: Quality, professionalism, I think, service and love. Now, and I think now when you say service, I think it conjures up very different, it resonates very different with people. You know, when you think of community service. You think the social service of military service is none of those things, but, actually, I think Robin really thought very deeply about this. And I know that Robert Cohan has told me, you know, many times over the years that in the early days of The Place, he and Robin Howard used to go back to the Gore Hotel in Kensington, which Robin owned, and went up to his top-floor apartment, and night after night they would talk about what dance could be, should be, needed to be. They thought long, long and hard about it. And so, you know, and this was really what underpinned the deep philosophy and the thinking about The Place in its early years, when there was an incredible energy and commitment and set of values, which even if you didn’t have words for them, you almost felt through just being there. And so, I think service was really a commitment to the art form.

Alastair Macaulay: I love all the nouns you attributed to Robin. The one thing I think I would wonder whether he would add would be individualism, because the early London Contemporary Dance Theatre that you and I were discovering at the very same time was so full of striking individuals.

Kenneth Tharp: You’re absolutely right. And one of the descriptions of the company was often a company of soloists because, you know, the standard was so high and any of those dancers could hold the stage on their own. And yet you didn’t have the hierarchy of a ballet company.

Robin and Bob, I think they never stayed still. And I think that’s the mark of great people. They’re thinking and what they’re doing always evolves. I think values last. I think how those values manifest may change and evolve quite naturally. I think Robin was not afraid of change. So, I don’t know whether anyone else has alluded to this, but there was a period after about 11 years – and I think it was written up in the Dancing Times, at least partly, but I’ve heard this from Bob, Robert Cohan himself – when Bob went to Robin after 11 years and said, ‘Robin, I think we should close the company because it’s achieved everything that it set out to do’. And Robin said, ‘I need to go and think about it.’ And Robin came back a few days later and said, ‘Look, Bob, I understand exactly why you’ve said and I kind of agree with you, but the one thing we cannot do is put all those dancers out of work and not just the dancers, all the technicians, the whole, you know, structure of a company that’s been built up.’ And so, they didn’t. I think they were both brave enough to recognise that there was another energy happening, something else was coming. You know, what we now know is the independent dance sector was beginning to flourish.

And I think they felt that if they created a vacuum, things would naturally come and fill it, you know, and by the time London Contemporary did, sadly, eventually close amidst a very challenging political climate where I think we were seen to be hogging all the money. I suppose in contemporary [dance] terms, we were like the equivalent of The Royal Ballet. You know, why are they getting all the money kind of thing? And it came down, I guess – behind the scenes – it appears to have been a decision between either us or Rambert continuing. Putting aside the politics, I think the fact that Robin Howard and the founders of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre had had years before that already, you know, even said to themselves or considered the idea seriously of closing it, I think shows how ahead of the game they were. I think Robin Howard – and I don’t use this word lightly because I think it’s often overused – but I generally think Robin was one of the most visionary people I’ve ever met.

And I think Robert Cohan is someone who I feel so blessed to know, have known and still know. I think he made more impact on me – definitely – as a dancer than perhaps anyone else. I’d say not just the dance, but he also influenced [me] at a much deeper level. If I can borrow a phrase from one of my former colleagues from London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Christopher Bannerman, who I remember around the time of Bob’s 80th, said that Bob Cohan told us not just how to dance. He taught us how to be. I know that can [be a] slip of the tongue and sound a bit glib, but I think anyone who experienced being with Bob day after day in the studio, he had, he had so much to draw on as a person, and so when he drew analogies or painted a picture or gave us a challenge of focusing in a particular way, he was he was so spot on.

When Paul Jackson, who wrote his [Cohan’s] biography, The Last Guru, one of the things I learned about Bob in reading that was that at the age of 12 in Brooklyn, he knew every species of bird that migrated through Brooklyn. He used to go down to the water every day. Just that fact alone is an example of the fact that someone like Bob had so much just knowledge to draw on when he taught us in the studio. So, it was never just about the steps, and so I think, in that sense, when someone like Christopher said, you know, he taught us how to be, I think what he gave us was tools. So, if you look, so many people in that company went on to do in their own way, amazing things, but all quite different things. It’s not like we were cloned into one way of being. I think you used the word individualism. I think that’s a very accurate description of what Bob nurtured. He allowed us to be who we needed to be and yet still be members of a company.