Word: tharpe
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...1970s and '80s, and probably for a long time to come. In those years the notion of this paradigm of nobility mixing it up with modern dance seemed absurd. But a closer look at the record reveals he was already seeking out alliances with modern choreographers. When Twyla Tharp created Push Comes to Shove for him in 1976, she revealed a whole new Misha: rueful, droll, an outsider trying to get in -- and just as eagerly bursting...
...James L. Brooks has endured his harshest professional challenge. Last August, after three years of work, he had the first test screening of I'll Do Anything, his Hollywood father-daughter story with musical numbers written by Prince, Carole King and Sinead O'Connor and with choreography by Twyla Tharp. It's tough enough under the best of circumstances for the fretful filmmaker to let go of his babies and present them to audiences. But this time Brooks saw his anxiety justified. Audience response was calamitous: 100 people walked out, and opinion cards showed they hated the songs...
...then there is that inimitable chatterbox Twyla Tharp, who lightens a dry, cluttered program on postmodern dance. She talks up a storm about her work and, in rehearsal, cows a dancer and his ballerina into showing more feeling for each other. How did she get into choreography? "Nobody else would tolerate me so I had to make up my own dances," she explains. And so the camera catches her alone in a studio, bulky in practice clothes and noshing on a carrot, as she starts designing some steps to a Sousa march. Delightful...
...Alas, Tharp, like almost every other dancer in the program, is shown in disconnected snippets, often without explanatory context. The reason is that the series' interest in dance is less aesthetic than anthropological. The message seems to be that all peoples dance, ergo all dancing is equal -- even though some tribal rites, no matter how sacred they may be, are about as interesting to watch as the growth of bamboo. What's more, Dancing is multicultural with a vengeance, meaning that the producers think it insufficient to examine the central role that dance plays in primitive societies; they must also...
...Probably Tharp will refine the evening during the tour. Maybe another oldie or two would not hurt. To see Baryshnikov's lyrical, muscular performance in One More for the Road (1983), a last-act highlight, is to watch a marvelous synthesis of classical and modern dance -- what their creative partnership is all about...