Wit & Attitude Quote by Twyla Tharp

Tharp’s line lands like a slap to the romantic fantasy of the genius artist pulling one over on the crowd. In dance especially, where meaning isn’t pinned down by dialogue, “outwit” is the perfect verb: it conjures the choreographer as a magician, smuggling tricks past inattentive eyes. Tharp refuses that posture. The intent is practical, almost studio-floor advice: if you’re building work on the assumption that the audience is naive, you’re building on sand.

The subtext is a quiet vote of confidence in public intelligence. Audiences may not share your technical vocabulary, but they’re brutally fluent in attention. They sense padding, manipulation, and self-regard. They can feel when complexity is earned and when it’s camouflage. Tharp’s warning also doubles as a critique of auteur arrogance: the idea that the maker controls reception. In live performance, control is always partial. The room talks back through laughter, stillness, fidgeting, that collective micro-weather of engagement.

Context matters: Tharp comes out of a choreographic culture shaped by modern dance’s seriousness and postmodern dance’s skepticism, and she’s also a crossover figure who’s made work for Broadway, film, and concert stages. That career trains you to respect multiple kinds of viewers without pandering to any of them. “Outwit” isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s anti-pretension. The audience is not an opponent to defeat. It’s a partner you can’t bully into belief. The only sustainable “trick” is craft: clarity, surprise, and emotional accuracy strong enough that people recognize themselves before they have time to resist.