Word: tharpe
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...being given a bold new interpretation. For the first, how about putting together a couple of the terrific one-acts that Israel Horovitz and Terrence McNally were turning out in the 1960s and '70s (The Indian Wants the Bronx; Next)? For the second, with Susan Stroman and Twyla Tharp reinvigorating Broadway dance, what better time for a new West Side Story? For the third, well, let's just say if anybody is thinking of bringing back Death of a Salesman, it had damned well better star Eminem...
...time when you could get people to see an original Broadway show). It revived Oklahoma! and Into the Woods and Flower Drum Song. It adapted movies: Hairspray (John Waters' movie about early-'60s Baltimore), The Graduate, Marty, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It even got choreographer Twyla Tharp, for Movin' Out, to become the first person to hold the phrases Billy Joel and dance number in her head simultaneously since whatever poor sap directed the video for Uptown Girl. In all, the best way to get onstage was by having been a movie or a pop song. Being theatrical...
...gorgeous stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany may be an unlikely venue for a dance troupe. However, the notion is not entirely alien to dance. The Judson Church in New York’s Greenwich Village was the place choreographers Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs and Twyla Tharp collaborated to help create postmodern dance. Indeed, once pews have been removed, churches with their expansive nave and proscenium stage are ideal spaces for dance...
Even the debased act of recycling old rock songs can be the occasion for artistic alchemy. Two years ago, Tharp called Joel, whom she had never met, asked him over to the house and told him she wanted to do a musical based on his songs. He said yes, then stepped aside and let Tharp go to town on Movin' Out, a two-act dance musical built around a couple dozen of his songs (not just Uptown Girl and Captain Jack, but some of his classical compositions as well), linking them loosely with a story that spans two decades...
...Tharp has done this sort of thing before, but usually in the confines of highbrow dance troupes (like Deuce Coupe, based on Beach Boys music, for the Joffrey Ballet). Here she manages to enhance Joel's music (sung by a Billy stand-in, Michael Cavanaugh, who sits at a piano, accompanied by a 10-piece band, on a platform above the stage) while buoying the spirits with sexy, high-voltage dancing that promises to give Broadway a rush of excitement. Best of all, she does it the old-fashioned, pre-Mamma Mia! way: no dancing in the aisles...