A hush fell over the hundreds of Guilford College students and faculty and Greensboro community members who sat tightly packed in the War Memorial Auditorium. After a handful of introductory remarks by Kent Chabotar, the eager audience gave ample applause as prominent choreographer Twyla Tharp assumed her place on the stage and began to speak.

In her discussion of the interface between habit and creativity, Tharp discussed the emptiness that many artists must face upon beginning any sort of significant task or project.

“Any person who faces any sort of structural material must face a void,” said Tharp. “We must learn to face that emptiness.”

Another aspect of the interaction between creativity and habit that Tharp discussed was the difference between a “dream” and a “purpose.” Although both are seen as ways of outlining goals for the future, “a dream goes away and a purpose stays there every day,” according to Tharp.

One of the main tenets of Tharp’s book, “The Creative Habit,” is that there are a variety of factors which hold most people back from harnessing their creative potential. Many of these are discussed in the chapter “Rituals of Preparation” and include the self-deprecating statements that many people formulate, including “people will laugh at me” and “this idea will never be as good in reality as it is in my own mind.”

Throughout her speech, Tharp mixed a great deal of engaging and thought-provoking advice on how we can best engage our minds creatively with a decent dose of sarcastic and occasionally over-the-top humor.

Tharp described one of the worst experiences that can occur to someone embarking on a creative project — the experience of being caught in a rut — and subsequently asked audience members to “expose themselves” if they felt themselves in a rut by coming onto the stage with her.

One student, named Emma, raised her hand and came up to the stage, only to be asked to kneel face-down for approximately fifteen minutes while Tharp continued her discussion with two different panel members. Once her “rut” was finally addressed, Tharp showed her ability to mix in humor with relevant advice.

“I’m graduating in May and scared to enter the real world,” said Emma. “My parents want me to go to Social Work School, but I’m unsure if that’s what I want to do, and I would rather pursue dance.”

“Well, it sounds to me like you’re not actually in a rut — you’re simply conflicted — so I’m not sure why you raised your hand,” said Tharp.

“Also, the economy is terrible, so you really don’t have anything to lose by becoming a dancer,” added Tharp.

In between the moments of humor, there were also pieces of advice for those searching for their inner creativity as well as moments of genuine contemplation on her own career.

Student reaction to Tharp’s speech was largely positive. However, there were some who felt let down by Tharp’s performance.

“I really don’t think that her speech was an adequate representation of what she does,” said senior theatre studies major Jacob Kresloff. “It took her at most twenty minutes to plan and was basically her commercially marketing her book.”

“What she said about the task of having to sift through a huge amount of research and drudgery when facing a void at the beginning of an artistic endeavor was accurate,” said Kresloff. “However, it doesn’t compensate for how demeaning she was to some of the students or how she essentially stroked her own ego.”

Despite criticism, Tharp defended the altruistic value of her work.

“If my work does not send people out feeling better than they did before, we have failed to do our jobs; if it does, then we have,” said Tharp.