Twyla Tharp’s 50th anniversary tour, at Centennial Hall on Sunday, Oct. 9, won’t be a collection of her greatest hits. The program doesn’t include any crossover ballets danced to songs by the Beach Boys or Frank Sinatra.
To recognize this milepost anniversary, Tharp has drawn together a trio of feature-length pieces representing the spirit of her work from 1976 to 2016. For music, she has culled from the compositions of Brahms, Beethoven and The Skillet Lickers.
Actually, that last group is one of several bands playing the early Americana songbook Tharp uses for “Country Dances,” which premiered in Edinburgh, Scotland, 40 years ago.
“The program has an arc to it that does reflect my life experience,” she said on the phone from her New York studio. “That was my intention. And there is a historical component. I have become my own curator.”
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“Brahms’ Paganini” (1980) has been updated a bit, she added. Presented as two “books,” the first is a solo by Reed Tankersley, the second is set on five of the company’s 12 dancers.
“Beethoven Opus 130” premiered last July in Saratoga Springs with eight dancers. Writing about the piece in the New York Times, Alastair Macaulay noted Tharp’s “intense eclecticism” and her “powerfully sophisticated command of the choreographic art.”
“The Brahms piece is very athletic,” Tharp said. “But ‘Country Dances’ is the most accessible. Among the audience, Brahms and Beethoven will always have their favorites.”
Tharp’s own career includes choreographing more than 130 works for the Joffrey Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the American Ballet Theatre, Miami City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, London’s Royal Ballet, the Australian Ballet and others, along with her own company as well as bringing dance to Broadway, television and the movies.
Across this broad canvas, her dances have become known for their sharp juxtapositions of ballet and modern, gymnastics and boxing, anything and everything. As one writer wryly observed, “She never met a body movement she didn’t like.”
For Tharp, making such unlikely components fit together is the zest of creativity. She thrives on it.
“From the beginning, I had a very eclectic background, so I had the tools,” Tharp explained. “Everything on stage is planned. It doesn’t happen by chance.”
It was for the Joffrey in 1973 that she created what is considered the first “crossover ballet,” using music from the Beach Boys. In 2001 she won a Tony for her Broadway show “Movin’ Out,” featuring the music of Billy Joel.
On the intellectual side, she is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant,” is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In these explorations of fitting together ballet and boxing, formal and casual movement, the high and the low, Tharp says she is continuing a centuries-long tradition.
“Artists have always valued equally both the secular and the profane, have always combined them,” she explained. “Everyone has done that. So am I.
“It’s not in my interest to do work that is only accessible. I feel responsible to both the high and the low.”
Chuck Graham is a freelance writer who has written about the Tucson arts scene for more than 30 years.
