Tharp hopes it will eventually grow big enough to free him from his day job.
"My day job gives me the freedom to take my time building Otrib, " Tharp says.
Indeed the themes and elements of this narrative dance are unusual for Ms. Tharp.
Other than a succinct, scene-by-scene breakdown, Ms. Tharp's program synopsis is but three sentences long.
Ms. Tharp's reduction and reworking of MacDonald's story simplifies its twists, turns and adventures.
No less a creative figure than Twyla Tharp, the acclaimed American dancer and choreographer, has made this exact point.
At ZoomInfo, Otrib founder Tharp told his boss, Bryan Burdick, about his online funeral planning venture when he was interviewing in 2007.
Feet and footwear figure in both MacDonald's story and Ms. Tharp's dance.
Samuel Tharp spends 50 hours a week as a vice president at ZoomInfo, an Internet search service that helps companies find information about prospective employees.
All the while, she played her part and kept herself artfully in line for Ms. Tharp's remarkably rigorous and yet free-seeming presentation of dancing children.
But if she can find student dancers as impressive as these Atlantans, my hunch is that Ms. Tharp won't change a step of the children's material.
While Don Holder's sensitive lighting enriches the stage pictures, it's too bad it couldn't somehow pinpoint and highlight the foot focus of Ms. Tharp's dramatic action.
On his journey towards this terrifying finale, inspiration came from award-winning choreographer Twyla Tharp and Patrick Swayze, the actor who will always be known for dirty dancing.
Ms. Tharp, now 70 and a grandmother, has long been known for her iconoclastic works, which date back to 1965 and range from stark cerebral dances to grander ballet spectacles.
Dreamworks head of distribution Jim Tharp said they had had an increase in the number of screens available to show the film, meaning they were able to expand past the 4, 000 mark.
More happily, the "stolen children" a narrative element Ms. Tharp devised to give her take on MacDonald's tale further dance opportunities are outfitted winningly in togs that might be off the rack of a local boutique.
After work Tharp, 39, returns to his Acton, Mass. home and spends two hours on another job: He is the founder of year-old Otrib.com, a service that helps people plan funerals, send death notices and write tributes to those who have passed away.
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