Word: tharpe
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...Lionel Richie, among others, into a ballet film set in the U.S.S.R. He has also had the inspiration, radical by the standards of recent musicals, to keep his dancers' feet in the film frame, and to hold a shot long enough to anchor the loping rhythms of Choreographer Twyla Tharp. Hines taps and boogies--and acts--his way out of some preposterous plot contrivances, and Isabella Rossellini and Helen Mirren bring urgent dignity to their satellite roles...
...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...
...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...