Twyla Tharp’s ‘The Creative Habit – learn it and use it for life’ is a hybrid, at once a self-help title and a self-portrait, and a recognisable one at that. She is a Puritan, has great certainties and is impatient of ambiguity (“I don’t like grey. That is how I am.”). The truculence is all there, but also a redeeming self-knowledge. She is an admitted obsessive, expecting an almost religious allegiance from her dancers. Are they committed? Are they producing ideas? At the very least, she expects ‘insane commitment’. She wrote the book, while rehearsing ‘Movin’ Out’, which was to become a Broadway hit. An advance on the book’s royalties helped finance the show. The core of her argument is in the book’s title: that creativity is less a matter of genius than of disciplined work habits. Her rituals - notably her daily two-hour gym session beginning at 5.30 a.m. - matter; not merely because they shape her day, but because they are a source of strength when creativity is barren and inspiration comes slow.
Many of her anecdotes echo the best creativity research. Sensibly she lives by a lawyer friend’s litmus test of a job’s worth: “what’s in it for me?” If there is no good answer to that question, she advises, don’t do it. The absence of intrinsic motivation erodes the very core of creativity, as Tharp once found to her cost. Obligated to a composer who had once done her a favour, she spent six weeks rehearsing sixteen dancers on a poor piece of music called ‘The Hollywood Kiss’. Because she had little conviction in the work, it did not come together. Despite the expense, she dropped the project. Obligation, she ruefully reflected, was a flimsy basis for creativity.

Instead of ‘intrinsic motivation’, Tharp prefers to speak of ‘gut instinct’. Her decision to trust it led to her choice of direction. She could have been a painter – she had the talent. Going with her gut, and not her head, removed an arbitrary element of choice.

She learnt about failure early. In 1966 the Evening Standard’s critic (sadly unnamed) wrote: “Three girls, one of them named Twyla Tharp, appeared at the Albert Hall last evening and threatened to do the same again tonight.” The review was memorable enough to rankle. But failure is part of the creative process. Jerome Robbins said that he had done his best work after his biggest disasters. Tharp agrees. For her, failure is therapeutic, clarifies artistic identity, and - at best - enlarges it.

When Tharp speaks of her creative ‘DNA’ she uses the metaphor of ‘focal length’ like that of a camera lens. Jerome Robbins, she suggests, viewed the world from the perspective of the middle-distance and this might have been rooted in his childhood wish to be a puppeteer. Balanchine, in contrast, portrays life in its essence, rather than its detail. For her part, Tharp experiences a duality – an ability to create dances about a life force, in tandem with a need to make dances that tell a specific story. Tharp’s Broadway success, 'Movin’ Out', has this bifocal quality. She is her own dramaturge and her preparatory research has an obsessive quality. “I’m not sure everyone would log time reviewing U.S. army training films from the Vietnam era. That’s the mildly over the top research that tells me that I’m prepared – and arms me with confidence when I get down to the real work of creating.”

Tharp’s thoughts on resources chime convincingly with creativity research findings that there is a ‘threshold of sufficiency’ beyond which resources make no difference. Limits, she says, can be a secret blessing, while bounty can be a curse. Her early poverty forced her to discover her essential dance vocabulary. Even Balanchine in the seeming plenty of New York City Ballet liked to feel he worked under resource restrictions. Asked how he made dances, he replied “On union time.” For Tharp, who has seen many artists dry up when overwhelmed with adequate resources, the moral is clear: ‘whom the god wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources.” She contrasts her own experiences at NYCB and ABT. Four years ago, invited by Peter Martins, (“any dancer you want, all the rehearsal time you want, whatever musicians you want”) she choreographed 'The Beethoven Seventh' for City Ballet. Mesmerised by the available resources, she cast too many dancers, and predicated the project on the mantra of ‘bigger, bolder, grander’ – making a large statement. In a moment of hubris, she even demanded that the Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber be flown to New York to conduct the performances.

The eventual work, while not a disaster, was tepidly received by critics and audiences. Immediately afterwards, she began work with ABT on the work that became The 'Brahms-Haydn Variations'. The budget was minimal, there was a fortnight’s rehearsal time, and principals had to fit rehearsals between other performances. Yet Tharp considered the piece the most satisfying of her career.

Tharp’s prescriptions – there are a number of creative exercises in the book – are sometimes idiosyncratic and personal. Her focus is on individual creativity rather than on managing that of others. Even so, there is much common sense here and some useful brainstorming exercises to jump-start creativity. Perhaps most characteristic is her prescription of self-induced rage when stuck for ideas. While anger is a cheap adrenalin rush, she allows, “When you’re getting nowhere and can’t get started it will do.”

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit, Simon & Schuster (£13.54 from Amazon.co.uk)