In the Upper Room

Jennifer Tipton was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Cornell University. After graduation, she came to New York to study dance, and her interest in lighting began with a course in the subject at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College. She has been awarded two Bessies and a Laurence Olivier Award for lighting dance; her work in that field includes pieces choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jiří Kylián, Dana Reitz, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp, among many others. In 1991, she received a Dance Magazine Award and has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Theater Program Distinguished Artist Award and a grant in the National Theatre Artist Residency Program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Her theater work has garnered a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Kudo, a Drama-Logue Award, two American Theatre Wing Awards, an Obie, two Drama Desk Awards, and two Tonys for The Cherry Orchard and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. She was the recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001 and the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003. In 2008, she became a United States Artist “Gracie” Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow. Ms. Tipton is on the faculty at the Yale University School of Drama.

Norma Kamali has been in the fashion industry for over 50 years and is known for her innovative designs. In 1973 her designs were referred to as ‘vintage of the future.’ In 2019 NORMALIFE was launched under the concept of a healthy lifestyle. NORMALIFE is democratic and inclusive for men and women of all ages, skin color, and type. I Am Invincible, Norma’s healthy lifestyle guide on aging with power, was released February 2021. Norma continues to live through her purpose in life of empowering women.

Born in Baltimore, Philip Glass studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics and philosophy, he went to New York’s Juilliard School, drove a cab and studied composition with Darius Milhaud and others.

At 23, he moved to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger. While there, he discovered Indian classical music while transcribing the works of Ravi Shankar into Western musical notation. A creative turning point, Glass researched non-Western music in India and parts of Africa, and applied the techniques to his own composition.

Back in the United States, Glass spent the late 1960s and early 1970s creating a major collection of new music. In 1976 his landmark opera Einstein on the Beach was staged by Robert Wilson to a baffling variety of reviews. His compositions were so avant-garde that he had to form the Philip Glass Ensemble to give them a venue for performance. Although called a minimalist by the Western classical mainstream, he denies this categorization. His major works include opera, theater pieces, film soundtracks, dance and song. Glass remains one of the most important American composers. More recently, a major reexamination of Glass’s oeuvre has led him to be labeled “The Last Romantic” by the musical press.

Through his opera, symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble, and collaborations with artists, Glass has had an extraordinary impact on the musical and intellectual life of his times. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than 25 operas; twelve symphonies; three piano concertos; concertos for violin, piano, timpani, saxophone quartet, and orchestra; soundtracks for films; string quartets; and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ.

Randall G. Chiarelli (1949-2024) devoted his career to lighting for dance, much of it at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and also for American Ballet Theatre, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, among others. His many collaborators included choreographers Donald Byrd, Mark Dendy, Ronald Hynd, Kent Stowell, Susan Stroman, and Christopher Wheeldon. Chiarelli graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in painting and sculpture.

Santo Loquasto is a Tony and Drama Desk award winning designer for dance, theater, and film. Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove marked the beginning of a long-term relationship with American Ballet Theatre. He also collaborated with choreographers Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paul Taylor, Agnes de Mille, James Kudelka, and Mark Morris. For film, Mr. Loquasto has received Academy Award nominations for production design for Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway and Radio Days, and for costume design for Allen’s Zelig. Other film credits include Desperately Seeking Susan and Big.

Shelley Washington studied with Twyla Tharp at Wolftrap Academy, American University, prior to being invited to join Twyla Tharp Dance Company in 1975. She previously danced as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. A graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, Ms. Washington furthered her training at the Juilliard School. She performed in the 1977 film Hair and served as dance captain for the 1985 Broadway production of Singing in the Rain. In 1987, she was honored with a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie).

From 1988 to 1992, Ms. Washington worked with American Ballet Theatre as soloist and rehearsal director in association with Ms. Tharp. In 1993, she was rehearsal director for Ms. Tharp’s Cutting Up tour, starring Ms. Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Twyla Tharp and Dancers’ City Center season in New York, and Tharp Dances’ international tour. Ms. Washington continues to work with Ms. Tharp as rehearsal director by setting, staging, and directing Ms. Tharp’s ballets for various companies, including Boston Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance, Martha Graham Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, Australian Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Ballet Rambert, The Royal Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Zurich Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, Ballet Florida and the Royal Danish Ballet.

In addition, Ms. Washington spent the summer of 1999 working with Trevor Nunn’s company, Royal National Theater, as movement director and choreographer for A Darker Face of the Earth, which opened at the Cottlesloe Theatre in London.

Since her graduation from Barnard College in 1963, Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred twenty-five dances, five Hollywood movies, directed and choreographed two Broadway shows, written two books and received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, seventeen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts and numerous grants including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1965 Ms. Tharp began the dance company Twyla Tharp Dance for which she made 80 pieces including Nine Sinatra Songs and In the Upper Room. In 1988 Twyla Tharp Dance merged with American Ballet Theatre where Ms. Tharp created more than a dozen works. Since that time Ms. Tharp has choreographed dances for many companies including: The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance and The Martha Graham Dance Company.

In 1991 Ms. Tharp regrouped her company Twyla Tharp Dance and created a program with Mikhail Baryshnikov called Cutting Up, which went on to become one of contemporary dance’s most successful tours, appearing in twenty eight cities over a two month period. Since 1999 Twyla Tharp Dance and has been touring internationally to critical acclaim.

Ms. Tharp’s work first went to Broadway in 1980 with When We Were Very Young, followed in 1981 by her collaboration with David Byrne on The Catherine Wheel at the Winter Garden; and her 1985 staging of Singin’ in the Rain, which played at the Gershwin for three hundred sixty seven performances, followed by an extensive national tour. In 2002, Ms. Tharp and Billy Joel’s award-winning dance musical Movin’ Out premiered on Broadway, and a national tour opened in January 2004. Both companies are still playing. The recipient of a 2003 Tony Award for Movin’ Out, Ms. Tharp was also honored with the 2003 Astaire Award; the Drama League Award for Sustained Achievement in Musical Theater; and both the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Choreography.

In film Ms. Tharp has collaborated with director Milos Forman on Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980), and Amadeus (1984); with Taylor Hackford on White Nights (1985); and with James Brooks on I’ll Do Anything (1994).

Her television credits include choreographing Sue’s Leg for the inaugural episode of PBS’ Dance in America, co-producing and directing Making Television Dance, which won the Chicago International Film Festival Award; and directing The Catherine Wheel for BBC Television. Ms. Tharp co-directed the television special Baryshnikov by Tharp, which won two Emmy Awards as well as the Director’s Guild of America Award for Outstanding Director Achievement.

Ms. Tharp wrote her first book in 1992, her autobiography Push Comes to Shove. Her second book, The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life was published in October 2003.

Ms. Tharp continues to create works and lecture around the world.

Source: https://www.twylatharp.org/