Page "Twyla Tharp" Paragraph 2

When Tharp was a young child she spent a few months each year living with her Quaker grandparents on their farm in Indiana.

In 1950 Tharp's family — younger sister Twanette, twin brothers Stanley and Stanford, mother Lecile and father William — moved to Rialto, California.

Her parents opened a drive-in movie theater, where Tharp worked from the time she was 8 years old.

The drive-in was on the corner of Acacia and Foothill, the major east – west artery in Rialto and the path of Route 66.

She attended Pacific High School in San Bernardino and studied at the Vera Lynn School of Dance.

Tharp, a " devoted bookworm ," admits that this schedule left little time for a social life.

Tharp attended Pomona College in California but later transferred to Barnard College in New York City, where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 1963.

It was in New York that she studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham.

In 1963 Tharp joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company.