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Twyla Tharp Dance Photo Mark Seliger |
Twyla Tharp Dance
Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
February 7th, 2025
It is always special when viewers get to experience a beloved artist or arts institution’s major milestone. And it becomes even more significant when the occasion is as giant as a sixty-year anniversary. This past Friday evening, Cal Performances patrons bore witness to such an event, the Diamond Jubilee of Twyla Tharp Dance! The evening was all about beautiful movement, performed beautifully. The company brought two physical wonders to the Zellerbach stage – 1998’s Diabelli and the West Coast premiere of 2025’s SLACKTIDE. A brilliant double bill, each with live music, to commemorate six decades of intoxicating, boundary-pushing dance.
With Diabelli, Tharp created a comprehensive statement of physicality. Think of any kind of human movement, and in some form, it’s likely present in this dance. Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, a collection of thirty-three short piano works inspired by composer Anton Diabelli, served as the tour de force’s score. And with each of those thirty-three compositions, it was impossible to predict what might be coming next.
Dancers, clad in tuxedo jumpsuits, cycled through classical vocabulary and old-school jazz. There was partnered ballroom waltzes and the brush, hop, brush, hop of Broadway tap. Contact-improvisation fueled duets imbued the scene, as did acrobatics, square dance, jitterbug and jive. A dramatization of fisticuffs unfolded along with kid’s games of leapfrog and ring around the rosie. Modern sautés, jazzy pas de boureés, effacé, and more. It was a thorough dissertation on movement, and such fun to watch!
Diabelli is a true ensemble work - no lead dancers - allowing the star of the show to be the physical syntax. Speed fluctuations, crescendo and dynamic change (musically and choreographically) provided additional variety, though at close to one-hour, the piece is a tad long. Of course, using existing music in its entirety means the length of a piece is pre-determined. But even so, Diabelli does lag a bit in the middle. And the shorter variations can give a ‘stop/start’ vibe that affects overall fluidity. Having said that, there is no denying that Tharp’s Diabelli is a modern masterwork where the audience can revel in gorgeous phrase material, incomparably danced by breathtaking performers.
Even more beauty and sumptuousness awaited with Tharp’s new work SLACKTIDE, a conversation with Philip Glass’ composition Aguas da Amazonia. With both titles, water and water-themes seemed close at hand. Looking up the official definition of the term slack tide, words describing water as ‘still’ or ‘unstressed’ are common findings. The company emerged from the wings with that exact intention, moving in slow and stop motion. And as the tempo steadily increased, so too did curvy, swirly positions. Another example of deep, physical rigor, SLACKTIDE referenced percussive dance traditions and tactile footwork. Whirling, serpentine circuits were everywhere, including the atypical route of traveling backwards in space. A journey into the unknown, the uncertain.
Many of SLACKTIDE’s positions and formations were familiar from Diabelli, though much distinguished it as a very different piece. Certainly Glass’ music, but also the changeable lighting design (by Justin Townsend) projected on the back cyclorama. Every so often, the screen would transform from one lush set of colors to another. A bright canary yellow morphed into a vibrant blue. Ombre purples led to a rich indigo that soon became light pink. The dramatic color shifts provided frames and containers that, like Tharp’s choreography, were alive with texture and different atmospheric tones. What an amazing night of contemporary dance!