Legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp danced with TITAS executive director Charles Santos for 45 minutes Thursday night without ever leaving her chair. Where did she grow up? "I haven't." How did she first study dance? "I made it up."

The friendly verbal jousting was the latest installment in the Nasher Salon Lecture Series at Nasher Sculpture Center. As the exchanges went on, Santos coaxed more expansive answers from the playfully elusive Tharp, who's a spry 67.

She talked about her upbringing in Indiana and Southern California, where she spent a lot of time at her parents' drive-in "learning what goes on in dark cars." She remembered wearing pointe shoes to pull her red wagon full of comic books down the street.

When Santos read a long list of disciplines that Tharp studied as a child – everything from ballet and tap to piano and violin to German and baton twirling – she retorted, "My mother wanted me to be capable."

Tharp's capabilities have landed her in the pantheon of modern-dance choreographers alongside such historical greats as George Balanchine and Martha Graham.

After studying art history at Barnard College, she briefly joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company before starting her own troupe in the mid-1960s. In 1973, Deuce Coupe, set to the music of the Beach Boys, shook up the traditional dance world. It has been called the first "crossover ballet."

Tharp related that ability to balance artistry and accessibility with her trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a kid when access was free. "There is a kind of standard that needs to be respected without being elitist," she said. "Great art isn't elitist."

Though she studied dance under Graham, Taylor, Merce Cunningham and Erick Hawkins, Tharp was reluctant to cite influences. She mentioned seeing the late MGM musicals of Fred Astaire, and Santos brought up her love of the Italian neo-realist film The Bicycle Thief, from which she learned economy of storytelling.

"I wasn't interested in being mentored," she said. "I always wanted to find my own way."

Manuel Mendoza is a Dallas freelance writer.

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