by Leigh Witchel
American Ballet Theatre’s Twyla Tharp triple bill was an evening of big themes as much as small details. Like Alexei Ratmansky’s trio, it wasn’t just a mixed bill, but a series of data points: what Tharp made, how it fit into ballet. By the end of the evening, substance mattered more than style; it seemed less about preserving the “how” and more about the “why.”
It felt surprising that “The Brahms-Haydn Variations” was made in 2000; it looked as if it was created in the mid-80s: the time when Tharp was first vying to be ballet’s post-Balanchine heir. The ballet has the look of an essay question on What Classicism Means to Me, but Tharp is an expert apple polisher, and she knows her subject.
From the opening theme, Tharp showed us her definition of working classically. She set phrases right on the beat, with alacrity but not packed to the gills. The stage was filled with couples, but symmetrically arrayed. Right before the end of the theme the dancers did one torso roll. That was the statement of the motif for the rest of the ballet.
The variations began with Blaine Hoven reaching up and over Stephanie Williams’ leg as she dipped into extension. Tharp style is natural for Hoven, particularly here. Even when he’s dancing classical work, there’s a loose, rolling quality to his movement. Williams had a spacious, majestic quality, dipping low or arching back as Hoven spun her.
Tharp never had Balanchine’s Apollo moment though, where she realized she could pare back. Like Ratmansky, she’s a more-is-more kind of gal. Skylar Brandt and Arron Scott danced a pas de deux at the front of the stage but you didn’t notice it until it was halfway gone, because José Sebastian, Rachel Richardson and the corps behind were onstage first, dancing something equally complex.
Scott and Brandt were pinch hitting for Luciana Paris and the injured Herman Cornejo. Later on, Scott and Brandt danced a nymphs and shepherds duet, but if pastoral and grueling can be mixed, Tharp certainly tried. Scott was ripping from one tour into another.
Tharp referenced Balanchine (who wouldn’t when you want to ace that essay question?) but cagily. When she paid homage, it wasn’t in steps, but structure. At her finale, she had her five lead couples arrayed in a similar pattern as the demi-soloists in “Theme and Variations,” moving forward in lanes with the corps at the sides. After that, back to Tharp, a race and flurry before the final pose. Yet the vocabulary was danse d’école, and it illuminated what she has as her baseline for classicism.
“In the Upper Room” is a time capsule of the late 80s. Made in 1986, brought into ABT’s repertory in 1988 (when Tharp’s company was merged with ABT), the ballet mines so many of the decade’s trends: a fascination with aerobics wasn’t just about physical culture in Tharp’s dance, but the altered state reached by pushing past exhaustion.
Norma Kamali’s costumes were about as 80s as you could get. [A personal observation – I recall at the time being surprised that more people weren’t uncomfortable with the associations from Kamali’s black-and-white vertical striped pajamas. But it’s now 75 years since the camps and those associations have only dimmed further].
Cornejo’s injury triggered a chain of substitutions: Hoven went in for Cornejo, Duncan Lyle danced Hoven’s part. The dancers were already working hard; Misty Copeland, Scott and others were doing double duty.
“Upper Room” started out very clean with articulated positions, but is that the objective? The cast was divided into squadrons, some in sneakers and some on pointe, with different styles of movement. The progression of the ballet is that of a workout or marathon, including the shedding of clothing. Hoven, Lyle and Aran Bell wound up bare-chested, and the more tired the dancers got the more they looked like themselves. Isabella Boylston looked most at home here; Tharp was asking her to be what she usually is: a contemporary ballerina, and she hit prodigious balances.
In the juggernaut of Philip Glass’ score, the ballet mounted to a long smoky section that is a paradise of aerobics, with long skeins of movement that were less phrases than unending activity.
Soaring voices and low rumbles marked the last dance. If it were a race, this was The Wall: go and go, just keep going. Women entered shaking their heads side to side as they danced as if speaking in tongues.
Coming out with Hoven and Bell for his seemingly thousandth entry, Lyle had a look on his face encompassing both agony and ecstasy. At the very end of this grueling marathon Tharp had them push women into overhead presses and tosses. Bell nearly dumped one woman from sheer exhaustion and just lurched to the next lift. Tharp set up a physical progression to become a mystical one: like Sufi whirling, the collapse of form into euphoria.
New to ABT, “Deuce Coupe” is a far more radical outsider take on classicism than “Brahms-Haydn.” Tharp juxtaposed Christine Shevchenko, in white practice clothing, moving through an alphabetical list of steps contrasted with the rest of the company in polyester dresses and bell bottoms moving freely and loosely through songs by The Beach Boys.
Again though, Tharp studied for her test. “La Bayadère” wasn’t standard rep in the west yet (Natalia Makarova would stage the Shades scene the following year for ABT; Nureyev had staged it in the 60s for the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada) but Tharp’s snaking line of entry for “Little Deuce Coupe” is reminiscent of the entry path traveled by the corps in the Shades scene.
Deuce Coupe is now 46 years old. It was once contemporary – the work now is nostalgia. What was it like in its first season? I first saw any of Tharp’s choreography in 1981, but that was just enough later so the context for a work from ‘73 wasn’t there. In her contemporary review, Anna Kisselgoff called the music, by then going on two decades old, nostalgic and implied the ballet was as well even that early. The most topical moment was in “Papa Ooh Mau Mau” where the dancers mimed toking on joints. Ironic, also, that “Don’t Go Near the Water” warned us of a world where the most dangerous ecological issue was just pollution.
The current dancers weren’t even born when “Deuce Coupe” was made, and so they had plenty of attack, and less context. Copeland punched her phrase hard on entering, and is that entry really about vamping the audience on the way out as Tyler Maloney did? James Whiteside and Boylston took “Honda II” as a high-energy freak-out, bopping like crazy.
In “Alley Oop,” Whiteside sold the jazz elements as if he were on “Dance Fever.” It got better when the music sped up to Alvin the Chipmunk speed. The dancers didn’t have time to think, and they stopped commenting and just danced.
Copeland danced “Got to Know the Woman” and throughout the evening she justified her elevation to principal. She’s developed the presence of a first dancer: she can fill a stage alone, she knows how to sculpt her dancing to direct our attention, and just as importantly for someone at the top rank, she knows what not to do. “Brahms-Haydn” was as musically thought out; she always knew when to hit the peak of a pose or end a phrase.
Shevchenko’s role was grueling because it isn’t a dance, it’s a list. But there were hints to help string it together; such as Shevchenko getting driven off the stage by Boylston and Williams in “Long Tall Texan.” As the ballet went on, some of the women took up Shevchenko’s phrases.
After “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” the strips of graffiti used as backdrop rose, the lights dimmed, and for “Cuddle Up,” Shevchenko returned and circled the stage doing a reverence: ballet class’s signal of the end. Everyone snaked in again, and Tharp set a bona fide Beach Boys apotheosis.
If ABT’s revival isn’t as faithful to Tharp’s vocabulary as The Joffrey’s a few years ago, in some ways it’s clearer in intent. You could see how the dance was made and for all her manic antics, just how well Tharp understands the parts that make up a ballet.
Decades on, ABT’s Tharp revivals may also be the clearest in ambition. Tharp also understands grandeur, and maybe the clash between that and her outsider status was what’s made her such an odd bird in the dance world. In these works, her aim wasn’t to supplant classical technique but to posit a next step. She wanted the keys to the kingdom, not to burn it down.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“The Brahms-Haydn Variations,” “Deuce Coupe,” “In The Upper Room” – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
May 30, 2019
Cover: Anabel Katsnelson, Tyler Maloney, Erica Lall and Arron Scott in “In the Upper Room.” Photo © Marty Sohl.
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