by Leigh Witchel
Who’d a thunk it, Twyla Tharp is 80. Being Tharp, she celebrated with a show, one less about her age, than her hunger to get back onstage and back to work. That’s impressive. And she’s doing work that looks as consistently, energetically, manic as stuff she’s done before.
The revival of 1992’s “Pergolesi” had the lion’s share of the buzz. Originally done as a duet for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Tharp, it was now being performed by Sara Mearns and Robbie Fairchild, but with a twist. Mearns was taking not Tharp’s role, but Baryshnikov’s, and Fairchild was dancing Tharp’s. It was a piquant switch, but one that sounds more complicated than it actually was. Without partnering or pointe work, the piece was never particularly gendered. The costumes by Santo Loquasto were unisex: simple off-white sleeveless shirts and high-waisted pants.
“Pergolesi” is stereotypically Tharpian, exploring movement dynamics that seemed to come straight from her body: start-slow-stop-shimmy pacing that often had only a glancing congruence to the rhythms in the music. In an allegro opening, Mearns and Fairchild spun at the center, and Fairchild went into a solo with dynamics independent of the music, ending with a decorous flourish, to jogging, to another flourish. The walks and flourishes got exaggerated as Tharp started to lampoon classical dance’s courtesies.
Fairchild exited and Mearns danced a solo with those rhythmic dynamics, and the wili’s chugging arabesques for good measure. It ended with a port de bras and bow, and she motioned courteously but competitively for Fairchild to enter, as if asking him to top that, before they headed into an uptempo finale.
Fairchild mugged and lightly played to the audience, and that looked like what Tharp has always wanted: a mix of classical technique with an easy Broadway delivery. You need a hambone to do Tharp well. Mearns was dogged and determined: Abbott to his Costello. As always, there was as much Mearns in what she did as Tharp, but oddly enough, she did recall Baryshnikov. They’re both stars and there was a connection. Still, hating Mearns for always serving up a big steaming helping of Mearns is as pointless as hating Katharine Hepburn for always being Katharine Hepburn. As my companion said so perfectly there was no choice but to steal it, “Well, yes. She’s impervious to outside influences.”
Originally done in 2014 for Tiler Peck and Fairchild, “Cornbread” opened the show. Peck is now dancing it with Roman Mejia and their dancing gave the duet luster. The piece was first done with live folk music by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the music was recorded for this revival.
The costumes were simple with country references. Peck wore a simple black dress with a floral print; Mejia wore a red bandanna on his forehead. Folksy touches were placed on top of the steps as well, but the flexed feet and hoedown attitude were ornament rather than integral. Mejia went through packed phrases of turns on the ground and in the air, then popped Peck into a double air toss. It was less folk duet and more classical showpiece.
Peck strutted in to banjo and did her own virtuoso solo: quick pointe work, balances and poses. Mejia crossed the stage behind her several times like a fleeting thought. For some reason while offstage, her thoughts also took their shirt off. She rattled over to him with rapid-fire pointe work and shooed him out. After, they did a slow dance to fiddle, followed by an allegro finale of one entry after another. Previous ideas got sped up to 78 rpm: Peck ripped into chaînés; Mejia powered through jetés, rivoltades and turns in second. She grabbed her skirt and worked it before revolving into fouettés; they both did a few last struts for flavor.
Peck and Mejia seem to be A Partnering Thing now, and that’s A Good Thing. They made “Cornbread” look good. Tharp has long been sympatico to male pyrotechnicians, first Baryshnikov, then Ethan Stiefel, then Herman Cornejo, and now Mejia. She knows that body type from the inside out. Mejia may be a pyrotechnician, but he has the instincts of a classicist, and he has good enough proportions that he’s convincing in a bigger chunk of the repertory. He’s never been cheap in his delivery.
“Second Duet” did in fact come second, and that was a good place for it as a contrast with “Cornbread.” It was created from improvisation tapes Tharp did in ‘91 with Kevin O’Day. The piece was danced by Jacquelin Harris and James Gilmer, both from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Both were powerful performers, who partnered seamlessly in an unbroken phrase.
Wearing simple clothing and sneakers, Gilmer ran onstage and pitched himself to the floor. Harris, wary and frenzied, entered and joined him ambivalently, crawling up his back or kneeing him in the groin. The mood stayed combative as Thomas Larcher’s start-and-stop score, for piano and cello played live, scratched.
At first there was more clambering and partnering than steps, but then Gilmer let loose in a jeté en tournant and “Second Duet” settled into a more academic palette. Gilmer and Harris almost waltzed as the music ticked, like social dance frozen in amber. He passed her slowly over his back, She crawled on him laboriously and the music segued to a syrupy recording by Aztec Camera of Cole Porter’s “Do I Love You?” A strange choice – it was neither the original, nor up to date. One guess is that the recording, from 1990, might have been what was used on those 1991 tapes. For all the fussing she does, Tharp’s not much of an editor of her own work: Earlier, there was an inexplicable cross behind a scrim, where a group of kids and a boom box entered, posed, and then just picked up their things and left, like an unused prop.
Harris and Gilmore tumbled and fell, rolling over one another as if each were Sisyphus and the other, the boulder. The piece went on and felt as if Tharp exhausted her ideas and started to repeat herself, but Harris struggled to Gilmore’s back and he slowly galloped off. With its different movement palette, “Second Duet” was less predictable than “Cornbread,” except for the most predictable element of a contemporary duet: the battling couple. And Tharp didn’t add anything new to that.
It’s like Tharp to think it would be a great idea to make the closing dance a mashup of the previous three. At least the results were better than if you mixed the soup, salad and entree of your dinner together to make dessert.
“All In” (get it?), brought on the prior three couples, plus a new one, American Ballet Theatre’s Cassandra Trenary and Aran Bell, to a Brahms sonata for clarinet and piano. Mejia and Peck came in doing the entrée from “Cornbread” with flexed feet, except now in a classical context. It did provoke an interesting sense both of recognition, as well as the fascination of how to use thematic material. But it also made the steps feel interchangeable rather than universal.
Throwing more ingredients into the stew, Trenary and Bell danced what looked like sections of a work Tharp made for ABT: “The Brahms-Haydn Variations” It felt as if several independent dances were coexisting on the same stage, which Tharp finds thrilling if not everyone else.
Six young Tharpettes between the ages of 14 and 21 (that Tharp, with impressive modernity, all found on the Internet) danced as an ensemble. William Woodward, a hometown boy who danced with Atlanta Ballet’s second company, and 14-year-old Savannah Kristich seemed to pop out as expansive movers. Kristich is lanky and was quirky in her quality; all her movements seemed to reverberate in her arms or neck. Woodward was flexible and energetic, exploding in his jumps.
The six young dancers, sourced from far and wide, added to the picture, but their dancing, as when Tharp’s own company was uncomfortably merged with ABT, felt independent rather than integrated. In the same random fashion, of the women only Peck was consistently on pointe, Mearns was swapping between pointe shoes and soft slippers.
A brief moment where Mejia entered with Peck only to carry her off to close out a movement seemed to upend expectations in a more purposeful fashion. But in as traditional a move as possible, Mearns and Fairchild then danced a bog-standard central pas de deux. Mearns was on pointe for this, and it didn’t seem to be anything Tharp had any belief in. The duet meandered until Mearns walked away from Fairchild and off the stage as if she were escaping a date from hell.
Gilmer and Harris returned in a polka. Tharp had them gawk at the ensemble, as if we were being cued to as well. But Mejia managed to make the fake-hearty entry that moved into big tour jetés elegant. Later, Mearns motioned offstage for another dancer to enter, and when no one did, had to feign being disappointed. And Peck high-fived another dancer on her way in. Maybe Fairchild could have sold all that.
Instead, Fairchild quoted “Pergolesi” and Mearns, back in soft slippers, did bell kicks and huge jetés. The full cast returned to form a line, and ended as the women were lifted and Mearns clambered on to the thighs of two men.
The evening promised great dancing and great dancers, and it delivered. How interested you are in Tharp’s brand of choreographic hellzapoppin’ determined whether you left happy with that or not.
copyright ©2021 by Leigh Witchel
“Cornbread,” “Second Duet,” “Pergolesi,” “All In” – Twyla Now
New York City Center, New York, NY
November 17, 2021
Cover: Roman Mejia and Tiler Peck in “Cornbread.” Photo credit © Paula Lobo.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
