Twyla Tharp: In those days, male dancers, as they are still today, were a rarer breed than women. A good male dancer, a male dancer frankly as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn’t afford to pay them because there was work that was available for them in all the major companies. That’s what we said, but the truth of matter is, we didn’t want them. Martha Graham also began her first company as all women. I think it’s because in modern dance, the female force has always been a very potent one. Modern dance in this country, in any case, is generally laid at the doorstep of female creators: Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey. The next generation were men, but they spun-off from that generation of women. Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, all came from the women because it was a primarily female force. I decided that we should not, in a way, pollute the experiment. It’s like mixed tennis. It’s a different game.