Twyla Tharp was and still is today a very well-known dancer and choreographer. Twyla was born on July 1, 1941 in Portland, Indiana. Twyla was named after Twila Thornburg, "the reigning Pig Princess at the 89th Annual Muncie Fair, with the "i" changed to "y" because her mother always said it would look better on a marquee." (Tharp Facts) Twyla grew up in Indiana till she was 10 years old, when her and her family moved to Rialto, California to open up a drive-in movie theater on Route 66. After the family moved, Twyla started dance lessons at Vera Lynn School of Dance. Also, she "studied violin, piano, and drums, plus Flamenco, castanets, and cymbals" (Tharp Facts). At the age of 12 she began her Ballet training, which had been the focus later in her dance career. After graduating from Pacific High School, Twyla moved down to Las Angeles to attend Pomona College and study dance. Halfway through her sophomore year, she transferred to Barnard College in Manhattan, New York. When making it to New York, she enhanced her ballet skills at the American Ballet Theatre. She graduated in 1963 with an art history degree. About a year later Twyla opened up her own dance company.
In 1964 Twyla, at the age of 23, started her own dance company called Twyla Tharp Dance Company. Twyla builds magnificently on Cunningham's approach to dance, presenting energetic bodies moving in infinite variations through time and space (Cass 360). Some say that her work was humorous and edgy. Her dance company started out with 5 women and in 1969 2 men were added. The Twyla Dance Company was noticed in the early 1970's for, "a breezy style of dance that added irreverent squiggles, shrugged shoulders, little hops, and jumps to conventional dance steps, a technique she called the "stuffing" of movement phrases" (Tharp Facts). Anyone in the 70's and 80's could pick out a dancer from Twyla's dance company for their "creativity, wit, and technical precision coupled with a streetwise nonchalance" (Bio).