Twyla Tharp Launches Diamond Jubilee Tour @ TITAS / Dance Unbound
—Teresa Marrero
The 2024-’25 TITAS/Dance Unbound season kicked off to a stellar start with the highly anticipated Twyla Tharp Dance Company—launching its 60th anniversary tour with a one-night-only performance on Friday, September 20 at the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House. Naturally, the house was nearly sold out, and the audience very appreciative.
Tharp, now a vibrant 83 years of age, has racked up more accolades, honorary degrees, and awards than just about anyone in show business. And to be sure, in the talkback on performance night this Midwesterner-turned-New Yorker clearly stated that dance is show biz, with incredible dancers that she called “athletes.” Dance, she said, can and should be as exciting and self-sustaining as watching a baseball player steal second base. Lots of applause from the audience.
For the neophytes to the contemporary dance scene, Tharp is credited for breaking down what she perceived as false barriers between ballet, modern, and stage dancing. In 1973 Tharp choreographed Deuce Coupe for the Joffrey Ballet, to the music of The Beach Boys. Deuce Coupe is considered the first “crossover ballet,” a mix of ballet and modern dance. Later she choreographed Push Comes to Shove (1976), which featured ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov, and is now thought to be the best example of crossover ballet. In 1981 she collaborated with David Byrne (of the Talking Heads) creating The Catherine Wheel. And in 2002 Tharp premiered her dance musical Movin’ Out in Chicago, set to the music and lyrics of Billy Joel. The show opened later that year on Broadway, and had a long run.
You get the picture. Tharp is certainly the epitome of dance “unbound,” particularly by traditional barriers and divisions. And the night´s program laid out the prospect of experiencing an eclectic mix of older and newer Tharp choreography.
Starting with the very recognizable and upbeat Ocean’s Motion from 1975 (with music by Chuck Berry, costume design by Santo Loquasto, and original lighting by Jennifer Tipton), the show got off to a fun and upbeat start. The pieces included ‘Almost Grown,’ ‘Deep Feeling,’ ‘School Days,’ ‘Nadine’ (my favorite), ‘Too Pooped to Pop,’ the very wavy ‘Havana Moon,’ and ‘Almost Grown.’ For a taste, pull up this clip: https://www.facebook.com/TITASDance/videos/twyla-tharp-oceans-motion/893121186026491/
I mean, what’s not to like?
The moves by the dancers were perfectly synchronized with the quirks of the music, the be-bop blended with Tharp’s brand of dance moves that take advantage of every physical and emotional aspect of the dancers’ classically trained flexibility and stamina. No great leaps or lifts, but lots of fabulous moves that felt just right with this music.
Choregraphed as a ensemble, the dancers were: Miriam Gittens, Daisy Jacobson, Reed Tankersley, Jake Tribus and Skye Mattox in various combinations of group and solo pieces. (Thanks to audience members Jo and Myra Kirkenaer, seated next to me, for the information that Skye is the granddaughter of classical jazz dancer Matt Mattox). The costumes stayed in the bubble gum pink and grey range, with some shorts, miniskirts and loose long sleeves, all adding dynamism to the movements. The lighting was bright with minimal changes.
Ocean’s Motion was a fun and upbeat way to hook the audience into the world according to Tharp. There was a slight pause after the first set, followed by a sharp, 180-degree turn in mood with the contemporary Brel (2024), a solo piece performed by New York City Ballet principal dancer (and Tharp company member) Daniel Ulbricht, with music and lyrics in French by Jacques Brel, and lighting by James F. Ingalls. The work took us from light, bouncy Chuck Berry into the lyrical and darker mood of Brel.
The virtuosity of Ulbricht’s classical dance training outshone the darkish stage design and outfit. With a black leotard-type top and grey tights and shoes, the bottom half of the dancer’s body seemed to disappear into the floor. What was visible, at least from where I was seated toward the back, were three quarters of his bare arms and face. In general conversation with a couple next to me, they agreed that the lighting and/or costuming could have better highlighted the dancer’s virtuosity in the lower half of his body. To a mostly English-speaking audience, a piece whose emotional and musical charge registered in French may have been a bit incomprehensible. Nevertheless, Ulbricht earned ardent applause and a standing ovation at the end of the piece.
After the intermission came the final segment of the evening, another 2024 piece by Tharp called The Ballet Master, with costume design again by Loquasto and lighting by Ingalls. The Ballet Master tells the familiar story of a choreographer’s creative process. “The first part shows the struggle it entails; the second illustrates artistic breakthrough. The third completes the work begun in the first.” https://www.twylatharp.org/works/ballet-master .
Using the visual trope of a Quixote-esque armor, and with John Selya in the principal role, The Ballet Master attempts to direct the dancers to the zany, monosyllabic “BI BA BO” by the Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt. The repetition of the single syllables in this vocals-only piece feels somewhat silly yet complex, and a bit like a possible soundtrack to the early theatrical piece Ubu Roi (1896) by the French early 20th-century avant-gardist Alfred Jarry. The repetitions of the piece take on an urgency as it progresses, driving both the Ballet Master and the dancers: Ulbricht (as Sancho Panza), Mattox, Gittens, Jacobson, Tankersley, and Tribus.
Then imagine this morphing into the “Per la Solennnità di Lorenzo,” RV 562 in D major (1762) by the Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi which moves through an andante, adagio, and the final allegro. WOW. What an imagination to piece these together. In the talkback Tharp shared that a dance phrase of the Vivaldi piece, which served somewhat as a leitmotif, came to her decades prior and remained in the back of her mind until it gained embodiment this piece.
Another layer of the complexity takes on the nuances of Cervantes’ classic tale, of looking for the impossible dream, the dream of perfection he finds in the Dulcinea of his imaginings. With the assistance of Ulbricht’s Sancho Panza, the dancers embark in what can be called the self-referential process of any choreographer or story teller: the embodiment of perfection.
Attainable or not, The Ballet Master pokes fun at the rigidity of classical ballet, while exploiting the virtuosity of Tharp’s classically trained dancers. To draw parallels between the Spanish classical icon Miguel de Cervantes and his novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, which impacted Western literature by signaling/modeling a shift to modernity and innovation in its narrative structures, Twyla Tharp calls upon a similar irreverent, in your face, innovative spirit in her work—one that redeems the notion that age is just a number, and talent is eternal.
Next in the TITAS/Dance Unbound season on October 4-5 is Noche Flamenca, Looking for Goya at the Moody Performance Hall. For the entire season see:
https://titas.org/2024-2025-performances/
Teresa Marrero, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Spanish at the University of North Texas. She specializes in theater, film, and performance studies. She reviews dance and theater for onstagentx.com and other venues in English (as has a forthcoming commissioned piece for American Theatre Magazine. In Spanish she has been published in the Argentine journal Argus: https://argus-a.org/indice.html (Teresa.Marrero@unt.edu)
