THE HANGOVER REPORT – Twyla Tharp celebrates 50 years of dance-making with two invigorating new dances

IMG_5270Last night, I attended the sold out final Washington, DC performance of Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. Ms. Tharp has long been one of my very favorite contemporary choreographers ever since I first encountered her work during the pre-Broadway tryout of her sensational Billy Joel “dancical” Movin’ Out in Chicago. What I love about her work is the joyful range of movement and inherent theatricality of her dances, even those firmly rooted in classical choreographic vocabulary. Her ballets tell stories (not always explicit), therefore requiring her dancers to not only dance, but act, the choreography. Her “why not?” approach to dance-making is infectious, as evidenced by the the exuberance of her dancers – many of them with extensive and significant Twyla Tharp pieces on their resumes (including the ageless John Selya, who led both her Broadway outings, Movin’ Out and Come Fly Away) – during last night’s performance and the audience’s ecstatic ovation at the close of the program.

For her 50th anniversary tour, the tireless Ms. Tharp, instead of falling back on established hits of the past, admirably opted to unveil two new works. The first, the playfully serene “Preludes and Fugues”, which is set to the music of Bach, paid homage to her fellow master choregraphers (e.g., Balanchine, Robbins), and highlighted the individual strengths of her dancers. Although she quoted from other choreographers, “Preludes and Fugues” was all Tharp, complete with her signature structural fluidity and stretches of seemingly improvised choreography. The audience favorite, though, was the second act’s rousing “Yowzie”, which is set to a series of jazzy selections. Here, the company as a whole was the star, and boy was it a joy to watch (though not as choreographically substantive as the “Preludes and Fugues”). The dancers were all clearly having a blast, and their energy, enthusiasm, and chemistry with each other was palpable.

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TWYLA THARP 50TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
Dance
Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center
2 hours (no intermission)
The tour concludes in New York at the David H. Koch Theater on November 16-22

Categories: Broadway, Dance

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