The Collaborative Habit - by Twyla Tharp (Paperback)

About the Book

In a career that has spanned four decades, choreographer Twyla Tharp has collaborated with great musicians, designers, thousands of dancers, and almost a hundred companies. She's experienced the thrill of shared achievement and has seen what happens when group efforts fizzle. Her professional life has been--and continues to be--one collaboration after another. In this practical sequel to her Creative Habit, Tharp explains why collaboration is important to her, and can be for you. She shows how to recognize good candidates for partnership and how to build one successfully, and analyzes dysfunctional collaborations. Tharp sees collaboration as a daily practice, and her book is rich in examples from her career--and she suggests that the lessons you learn by working together professionally can help you in your personal relationships.--From publisher description.

Book Synopsis

- An important and useful skill: In education, collaborative classroom learning is replacing head-to-head competition. In business, the best leaders are team-builders who can inspire great group efforts. Tharp uses her decades of experience to explain why teamwork is a superior way of working for some of us and inevitable for almost all of us. .

- The essential lessons of group effort: Tharp takes readers through the most common varieties of collaborations, including working with a partner, with institutions and middlemen, outside your expertise, in a virtual partnership, with a friend, with someone who outranks you, plus how to deal with toxic collaborators, and much more..

- Examples from one of America's greatest collaborators: Twyla Tharp shows how she built successful collaborations with Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Milos Forman, and four generations of great dancers..