Word: twyla
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Splat Falls. Push Comes to Shove is the name of the ballet; its inventor is Choreographer Twyla Tharp. Last week it was unveiled by the American Ballet Theater at Manhattan's Uris Theater, and it just might be the most important event of the dance year. With cinematic speed, the cast of characters tumbles around the stage to the sounds of Haydn's 82nd Symphony. Isn't that Buster Keaton? There's Joe Namath and a courtful of jokers, heroes and heroines all. Linked by sheer velocity, the steps merge in combinations that are silly...
...Twyla Tharp has been seriously watching movies starting from the tune that she worked as a carhop in drive-in theaters owned by her parents. A native of Indiana, she was named after a Midwestern pig-calling contestant known as Twila. "My mother thought Twyla would look good on a theater marquee," explains Tharp. Her ambitious mother also laid out a marathon course of piano, violin, viola, drum, baton-twirling, ballet and tap-dancing lessons that occupied Tharp's childhood. It all paid...
...roles drawn from outside the classical repertory. Les Patineurs is one of these, as is Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, which he flew to Paris to learn from Choreographer Petit. In the summer he will add Shadowplay, which Antony Tudor is reworking especially for him. Such innovators as Twyla Tharp and Alvin Ailey are also working on new ballets for him. John Neumeier, director of the Hamburg Opera Ballet, will stage Hamlet for him-probably next winter...
Deuce Coupe, by Guest Choreographer Twyla Tharp, was set to a 30-minute anthology of recorded hits by the Beach Boys, sultans of surfdom in the early 1960s. Now enjoying a new wave of popularity, the Beach Boys have a distinctive style that combines close vocal harmony with innocent, unconcerned bounce. Deuce Coupe had little harmony and even less bounce. The choreography was an attempt to contrast classical ballet with the popular dances of the past decade or so. The result was a suspension not unlike the average salad dressing: it stayed together only when shaken frequently. The corps...