Italians, and visitors to il bel paese, have a rare opportunity to see Twyla Tharp Dance between 21 and 26 June when the company visits Florence, Ravenna and Rome.
For the Italian tour the company brings an exciting preview of a new work together with two classic works from the vast Tharp repertory; during Tharp's half-century of creating dance she has “choreographed more than 160 works: 129 dances, 12 television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows and two figure skating routines”!
Tharp's versatility was amusingly summed up by Sanjoy Roy for The Guardian's Step-by-step guide to dance:
Twyla Tharp is America's crossover dance queen. High-minded but plain-talking, she melds classical ballet with modern dance, avant-garde experiment with Broadway pizzazz, technical rigour with off-the-cuff attitude, uptown glamour with downtown grit.
Tharp's impressive output includes works for her own company and also for most of the American dance companies, from ABT to the Martha Graham Company, as well as the Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet and The Australian Ballet.
Not only has Tharp's output been great but also of great worth which is demonstrated by the popularity of her work as well as the recognitions it has received. Her 1984 TV special Baryshnikov by Tharp earned her two Emmy Awards and the 2002 Broadway dance musical Movin' Out won her a Tony. In 2008 she was awarded the Jerome Robbins Prize and the Kennedy Center Honor, and she has received 19 honorary doctorates as well as many, many other accolades. Baryshnikov by Tharp was one of many highly successful Misha collaborations, starting with Push Comes To Shove in 1976, Sinatra Suite in 1983, the choreography for the 1985 film White Nights and the ‘roadshow' headlined by Tharp and Baryshnikov called Cutting Up in 1992.
Tharp's company, which she formed when she was just 23, has had some pauses in its 50-year history, but has always produced work of the highest calibre with a evolving palette of extraordinary dancers. Tharp once said,
I look for dancers who have all the technique in the world. But they must be dancers who are open-minded, who are willing to forget that they know anything. They also have to be gorgeous; they must have a clear image of themselves and strong personalities.
Eight such dancers will present the preview of Beethoven Opus 130, as well as Country Dances and Brahms Paganini for the Italian tour.
Twyla Tharp working with her dancers on Beethoven Opus – photo by Gene Feldman
The new creation, Beethoven Opus 130, will receive its official premiere at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on 30 June, but ‘preview' or ‘premiere' it will be the first time that a paying audience sees the latest work from the 74-year-old choreographer.
Beethoven Opus 130 features long-time Tharp collaborator Matthew Dibble, who came up through the Royal Ballet School and then joined the Royal Ballet. After five years with the company he was one of a group of dancers – Stuart Cassidy, William Trevitt, Michael Nunn and Gary Avis – that left the company in 1998, with Tetsuya Kumakawa, to form Japan's K Ballet. Soon after, however, he joined Tharp and has been with her ever since, dancing with her company or mounting her choreography for others.
Matthew Dibble
I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of choreographers in my time. Twyla is always pushing the dancers to the maximum physically and artistically, which is always what you want as a dancer… remounting is great but you always want to be creating new work with Twyla, always moving forward.
So how does a White Lodge pupil adapt to Tharp's wide-ranging contemporary style?
It felt the opposite to me. I grew up in the Royal ballet company and this felt uncomfortable to me. Adapting to Twyla felt like coming home! I have been very lucky to work with Twyla for over 15 years, from concert dance to Broadway to TV.
From the work's title one can assume that it is set to Beethoven's String Quartet N° 13 – Opus 130 – but aside from a few workshop shots taken during the Catskill Mountain Foundation residency in April, the piece is shrouded in secret. All that Dibble told me was,
The work feels like one man's battle through life, his ups and downs, and prevailing amid all that life throws at him.
Country Dances photographed by Lois Greenfield in 1976
No secrets behind the other two works. Country Dances premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976 though it was created for the PBS special Making Television Dance. It's set to an all-American old-time country score with music from those gloriously named groups of the early 19th century, like The Skillet Lickers, and Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers.
There are duets, trios and a quartet as the four dancers cut in and hand each other off as happens in traditional square dances. Like Georges Balanchine and Agnes de Mille, Tharp has continuously been inspired by American music and traditions.
Dancers wearing Ralph Lauren's costumes in Jack Mitchell's studio in 1980 for Brahms Paganini
Brahms Paganini, from 1980, is set to Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Paganini and uses six dancers from the eight-dancer company. It is divided into two ‘books', as is Brahms's fiendishly difficult piano piece. A solo male dancer performs the first book of variations with fast spins and expansive jumps as fiendish in its difficulty as the music.
Four dancers take on the athletic second book with a female soloist echoing the spirit of the preceding section. A tour de force of technical proficiency and stamina.
In 2008, Roslyn Sulcas of the New York Times wrote,
Ms Tharp is in the curious position of being consistently identified as both a modern dance revolutionary and one of ballet's few great living choreographers – certainly its only female one.
Though Twyla Tharp doesn't use the term ‘modern dance':
I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.
Teatro Verdi di Firenze – Florence Dance Festival (21 June) Ravenna Festival – Pala De André (24 June)
Auditorium Parco della Musica – Luglio Suona Bene Roma (26 June)
COUNTRY DANCES (1976)
Choreography – Twyla Tharp
Music – American Folk
Costumes – Santo Loquasto
Lighting – Jennifer Tipton
BRAHMS PAGANINI (1980)
Choreography – Twyla Tharp
Music – Johannes Brahms
Costumes – Ralph Lauren
Lighting – Jennifer Tipton
BEETHOVEN OPUS 130 – preview
Choreography – Twyla Tharp
Music – Ludwig van Beethoven
Costumes – Norma Kamali
Lighting – Stephen Terry
Gramilano( Editor )
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
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