The avant-garde traditionalist

Twyla Tharp, one of America's great choreographers, is excited. She has just won two Tony Awards for the Broadway hit, Movin' Out, set to music by Billy Joel - and she's looking forward to performing at Sadler's Wells with her newly reformed troupe, Twyla Tharp Dance.

"I've always enjoyed British audiences," says Tharp, who remembers her first trip to London fondly, despite having to sleep on someone's floor throughout - and despite receiving a review that commented more on her "funny-sounding" name than her choreography.

"I still keep that review," she says, claiming that it taught her iron resolve. But it's about more than proving herself to British critics: "I like to reconnect with London. I'm a great traditionalist. That's why it's important to me."

In keeping with tradition, the programme will include The Fugue, a 1970 work that has no music, but instead uses the sounds of the dancers' feet to create a rhythm. "There's a lot of history in that piece," says Tharp. "It feels good to be peforming a major early work again - along with pieces that are new to London."

First among the latter is Surfer at the River Styx, loosely based on Euripedes' The Bacchae and put together in collaboration with the percussionist and composer Donald Knaack. "I call it a collaboration by FedEx," says Tharp. The two were working in separate locations, with Knaack adjusting his soundtrack of recycled pots and pans as the choreography altered. Tharp admits that working like this is "chancy", but she and Knaack seem to mesh well together - another piece in the Sadler's Wells repertoire is Known by Heart Duet, a series of excerpts from earlier work that has been set to Knaack's Junk Music.

Westerly Round, meanwhile, shows off Tharp's sense of fun. Choreographed as an abstract square dance, it is a cowboy romance charged with flirtatious energy, and melds elegant classical ballet with the spirit of American folk dance.

Tharp is now on her fourth generation of dancers. (It's a prestigious apprenticeship - the last group, for example, is now on Broadway.) She says of the latest batch - Emily Coates, Lynda Sing, Charlie Hodges, Dario Vaccaro, Matthew Dibble and Jason McDole - that "I offer a harbour to them; I can only wait and see if a seedling takes bud, and grows."

Tharp certainly sets a good example: she's in the gym at sunrise, and practises yoga regularly. She believes in dance as a spiritual pursuit, and expects only the very best from herself and her troupe.

But she doesn't believe that her approach - or her work - should necessarily be characterised as "avant-garde": "It's the process - fresh, new, spontaneous - this is valid to me," she says.

And where will Tharp be during the show? "I'm hoping it will be packed out, and there won't be any space for me."

By Twyla Tharp Dance, Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1 (020-7863 8000; www.sadlerswells.com) tomorrow to Sat