Twyla Tharp Dance’s 60th anniversary tour includes ambitious masterpieces both new and old

CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN

From left, Kyle Halford, Angela Falk, Alexander Peters, Miriam Gittens, Reed Tankersley and Marzia Memoli dance in Twyla Tharp’s “Diabelli.”

Some dances call for repeated admiration. The riches of Twyla Tharp’s Diabelli, for instance, would not be exhausted after multiple viewings.

Yet few can claim to have seen this legendary dance in 1998, when it was new, and not enough will have the chance to enjoy it as part of Twyla Tharp Dance’s 60th Anniversary Tour, now making the rounds. Those lucky enough to have caught Diabelli on April 17 at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton can claim bragging rights. The program for this catch-it-if-you-can event also included Tharp’s latest, the darkly soulful SLACKTIDE.

CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN

Kyle Halford (top) with Oliver Greene-Cramer, Renan Cerdeiro, Alexander Peters and Reed Tankersley in “Diabelli.”

Diabelli is a piano ballet, sort of, set to Beethoven’s notoriously puckish “Diabelli Variations” performed live by Vladimir Rumyantsev. Though Tharp is clearly aware of what others have done in this line, she has her own agenda. She knows that Beethoven is supposedly off-limits to choreographers; and, naturally irreverent, she isn’t one to make a show of dancers idling beside the piano with one ear cocked. So in Diabelli, the piano remains offstage, along with Beethoven’s marble bust.

The stage belongs to the dancers. And Tharp needs all of it if she is going to create a showpiece of unrivaled ingenuity for these 10 fearless movers in sleeveless tuxedos. We see them lined up and swinging their arms to a jaunty march. We watch them glide in circling waltz steps. Yet while the choreography may allude to musical forms like the march and the waltz, and to musical strategies like counterpoint, Tharp would not dream of slavishly illustrating the score. Rapid dancing may accompany a stately passage, so the scene merely absorbs the music’s emotional coloring. Tharp takes from her source what she finds useful, just as Beethoven did. Perhaps more than anything, she has borrowed the composer’s lofty ambitions.

Five women and an equal number of men make up the cast. Marvelously at ease, they exchange partners and slip in and out of groups as patterns dissolve and new designs reveal themselves. Symmetry dominates, although Tharp may create a hectic picture with multiple foci only to pull the dancers into opposing corners, magically bringing order out of chaos. Oppositions and inversions are everywhere.

CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN

Renan Cerdeiro with Miriam Gittens and Nicole Morris in “Diabelli.”

While Diabelli impresses with its fluid architecture, the human element is equally important. Tharp is an inveterate prankster and, in this case, she has Beethoven to egg her on. Comic incidents and tomfoolery acknowledge the composer’s itch to parody his source material. Dancers find themselves off balance, with flexed feet extended, and are turned upside down. Individuals confront each other, nose to nose; when in reverse, they accidentally collide. In an extended skit, Renan Cerdeiro and Oliver Greene-Cramer play a game of one-upmanship. Greene-Cramer asserts himself, stepping in front of Cerdeiro, until they reverse direction and Cerdeiro disposes of his rival by tricking Greene-Cramer into backing offstage. (The loser briefly reappears, shaking his fist.)

More importantly, though Diabelli is “plotless,” the choreography portrays relationships and characters with interior lives. Amid the dance’s rigorous structure, individuals pursue their destinies. Alexander Peters is the soulful one, stumbling and reaching heavenward as the group freezes behind him. Later, he partners a coy but engaging Miriam Gittens in a duet that for all its gentleness catches the giddiness of the waltz. Peters lifts Gittens overhead, and then sets her down in a deep lunge — a vivid change in level that also suggests emotional extremes. Nicole Ashley Morris and Cerdeiro embrace passionately; Reed Tankersley and Kyle Halford romp together, seemingly playing tag.

Yet even this variety is not enough. Tharp dips her brush in darker colors to portray drawn-out suffering in a duet for Greene-Cramer and Daisy Jacobson. She repeatedly steps over his prone body (does she know he’s there?) and while he flattens himself against the upstage curtain in despair, she reaches for an elusive ideal.

STUDIO AURA

Twyla Tharp Dance members perform in “SLACKTIDE.”

The choreographer of Nine Sinatra Songs and the long-absent Heroes has something to say about gender roles in Diabelli, too. Tharp made a feminist statement in 1971 when she clothed her all-female company in Kermit Love’s mannish tuxedos for the ineffable Eight Jelly Rolls. In Diabelli, men and women dress alike in tuxedos by Geoffrey Beene. They also share the same movements, an all-American mix of the three “Bs” (ballet, ballroom and Broadway) together with the wobblies of post-modern dance. Similarly, recurring circles and “V” formations may be all-female, all-male, or all of the above. Not one to deprive herself of opportunities, however, Tharp allows the men to use their muscle in her acrobatic version of male-female partnering.

In the new SLACKTIDE, the cast is still wearing black, but they are no longer in uniform, reflecting the casual atmosphere of Philip Glass’s New Age jazz score “Águas da Amazônia.” Our first view of them is dramatic, not formal. A hand reaches up in a spotlight, and then multiple hands reach out from one side, the dancers’ bodies emerging gradually from the gloom of an offstage jungle. Each one seems to unwrap himself in isolation, as Halford leads the way across the stage with long, stretchy moves. Tankersley is even more alone — he’s a maverick who enters from the opposite corner and staggers toward the crowd.

Tharp has already given us a lot to chew on, and it is tempting to see this opening as an allegory of our times, with society still emerging from the isolation and the manufactured panic of the past few years. Other sections of the dance, in which small groups assemble to gaze into the distance, remarking upon mysteries in the sky that only they can see, may point to new events still on the horizon.

The title of the dance, SLACKTIDE, refers to a calm interlude when the forces of nature are in balance. Like these dancers, we should take advantage of the lull, before the tide of history grips us again.

STUDIO AURA

Twyla Tharp Dance members perform in “SLACKTIDE.”

Tharp’s feisty crew doesn’t waste time moping. Playful rivalries seem to divide the cast, with the women clustering to watch the men warily. All but Jacobson are intimidated by the men’s loud hand-claps. She accepts a challenge and drops a man to the ground, which the other women approve. When the men link in a rapidly spinning circle, Jacobson steps up to give this human wheel a push.

Though SLACKTIDE is clearly an ensemble piece, Tharp celebrates characters who, like Jacobson, display moxie and initiative. The choreographer gives Halford and Molly Rumble a high-octane duet, dancing side by side or intersecting in a tight space. Two couples grapple, barely visible in a clearing centerstage — like the unseen objects in the sky, they are among this dance’s mysteries. Yet the heroes of the piece are soloists: Marzia Memoli, who asserts herself with whiplash energy, and Tankersley, a character who flails and twists, following his own tortured path.

Throughout the dance, Justin Townsend’s lighting keeps changing — dyeing the backdrop in brilliant colors, plunging the stage into darkness, and then flooding it with light. A blackout ends the piece suddenly, with the dancers at the apex of a lift. Who knows what is coming next.

Unfortunately, this tour celebrates the anniversary of a pickup company that doesn’t afford Tharp’s dances a permanent home. Given this choreographer’s importance in the history of American dance, the situation is remarkable. No one should have to chase a tour bus to see these masterpieces more than once.

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