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Brief, Brilliant Phoenix: Twyla Tharp and Dancers
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19867 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1992 |
1,948 Words |
| Author
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Camille Hardy
Camille Hardy is a New York-based critic who publishes and
broadcasts on the arts internationally. |
Assembled last summer as a creative outlet by the feisty choreographer and performer, Twyla Tharp and Dancers presented a debut season at New York's City Center Theater (January 28-February 9) that was notable, above all, for ravishing moments and shrewd programming that showcased four premieres and two important revivals. Tharp has not appeared in New York with her own dancers in five years, and the current group was under contract only through an engagement in Japan in February.
For this brief period, the artist collected eighteen remarkable performers, including Isabelle Guerin, from the Paris Opera Ballet; Robert LaFosse, from the New York City Ballet; and Sara Rudner, Jamie Bishton, Kevin O'Day, and Keith Young, from Tharp's original troupe. Patrick Dupond flew in from Paris to participate in the opening-night festivities, along with composers Paul Simon and Edgar Meyer. Tharp, as puckish as ever, danced the central role in Men's Piece.
Taken as a whole, the newly assorted woks demonstrate the choreographer's transition from the swiveling, deceptively casual style associated with her dances of the early 1970s to a much more virtuosic technique rooted in the classical vocabulary, with vibrant local color or steamy social comment layered on inventively. And as always, Tharp retains her fascination with social forms, with dancing between men and women and what that tells us of their time and place.
Ocean's Motion and Deuce Coupe IV point up the change, part of which may be attributable to the fact that her growing emphasis on virtuosity has led Tharp, increasingly, to select ballet dancers for her repertoire. With the revival of Ocean's Motion, a chestnut set to Chuck Berry songs and funky with gym or beach dances of the late 1960s, Tharp's highly individualistic formalism is bitingly on view. Jodi Melnick slides, swivels, and all but burns a hole in the stage in her solo "To Pooped to Pop." The low-slung chassis and high-flying lifts are rigorously structured--inspite of the loose look--and ingeniously complement Berry's musical developments. The contrast between intellectual underpinnings and hip imagery was what galvanized initial attention to Tharp's repertoire and remains consistently legible here.
Deuce Coupe, made for the Joffrey Ballet in 1970, reiterated the tension between high art and street dancing. In its initial version, Tharp's dancers performed with the Joffrey ensemble to contrast the amalgamation of vocabularies seen in the work, choreographed to the Beach Boys' "Little Deuce Coup". Ever
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