THARP LOOKING SHARP AT NY CITY CENTER
Ten polished, pseudo-suited dancers graced New York City Center with playful panache in Twyla Tharp’s Diabelli (1998)– one of two pieces in the Diamond Jubilee program, running through March 16. Their polite yet zingy attitudes, melding with Anton Diabelli and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 120, imbued the theater with an upscale air. With gleeful faces and arms bent in front and behind their torsos, it was as if we had been dropped amidst a dinner party and handed flutes of champagne, the clinking of class reverberating through the theater. Accompanied by pianist Vladimir Rumyant, the group lunged, flicked, and twirled in Tharp’s signature jazz-ballet-pedestrian style for fifty-five minutes straight. The work is a marathon of dance, one unseen by New York audiences until now, as it premiered first in Palermo, Italy in October of 1998. Due to its 26 years of age, the piece doesn’t exactly resonate as current per se, but this doesn’t strip it of its inherent Tharpian dynamism.
Kyle Halford, Oliver Greene-Cramer, Renan Cerdeiro, Alexander Peters, Reed Tankersley
Marzia Memoli, Oliver Greene-Cramer, Daisy Jacobson,
Miriam Gittens, Renan Cerdeiro, Nicole Morris
Nicole Ashley Morris showcases quick ear grazing developés and leaps that bound across the stage, electrifying Beethoven’s score. Her erratic energy is harnessed and siphoned through intricate acrobating partnering. Morris catapults herself atop Renan Cerdeiro, and dangles upside down initiating a canon of movement among her fellow dancers. These chain reactions of repeated steps recur throughout Diabelli, providing a sense of familiarity alongside a twinge of predictability. Sprinklings of slapstick, vaudevillian comedy entered the mix as Oliver Greene-Cramer and Cerdeiro compete for the spotlight, evoking a Tom and Jerry vignette. Marzia Memoli mesmerizes with grounded swiveling hips and a carefree epaulement, her vessel a tornado of carefully controlled, ebullient pirouettes.
Kyle Halford, Angela Falk, Alexander Peters,
Miriam Gittens, Reed Tankersley, Marzia Memoli
Kyle Halford, Angela Falk, Reed Tankersley, Marzia Memoli,
Oliver Greene-Cramer, Daisy Jacobson, Upstage: Alexander Peters,
Miriam Gittens. Downstage: Renan Cerdeiro, Nicole Morris
As the work continues onwards, varied duets take the stage, however the partnership’s relevance or connection to one another appears rather void. Daisy Jacobson gazes out past her partner Alexander Peters, donning a forlorn expression as her arabesques extend beyond the parameters of the stage. Her feet, while articulate and purposeful, provide little help in identifying the duo’s ties. As Diabelli comes to a close with a bubbly bang, complete with buoyant grand jetés and zippy pirouettes in plié, a sense of satisfaction pervades. The triumphant completion of the nearly hour long piece is a feat easily shared, bridging the chasm between dancers and viewers.
SLACKTIDE
The second piece in the program, SLACKTIDE, choreographed by Tharp in 2025, also earned its New York premiere, showcasing Tharp’s indomitable capacity for currency. The work highlights the company of dancers in updated costumery, their unitard-suits and slick back buns swapped for an easily recognizable dance uniform of today: black shorts and pants, baggy shirts, calf length socks, and black ballet shoes. Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia accompanies the dancers, the score rearranged and performed by Third Coast Percussion. An electronic hum melds with keyboard, as hands appear amidst a striking spotlight by Justin Townsend.
SLACKTIDE (photos by Studio Aura)
The scrim slowly alights from black to bright yellow as the dancers promenade in attitude, their upper bodies curling and contracting before executing wide lunges harkening back to Diabelli. The work, a mere thirty five minutes, flew by as Memoli returned to the stage–a bolt of lightning. Her feet expertly tapping and toying with the rhythms while the dancers surrounding her run backwards and clap sporadically. As the men slap their thighs and leapfrog over one another the girls figure eight their hips–reveling in their grounded release. While the girls huddle to peer at the boys, the gendered divide and subsequent interplay exudes a youthful fear of the unknown. Brief moments of partnering appear and quickly evaporate before the duos return back to their designated groups. While various duos mingle around one another like an electron ping-pong, Molly Rumble’s hips jut forward as she hinges centerstage. Her form taking on an angular metamorphosis, exhibiting steely strength and malleability.
SLACKTIDE
SLACKTIDE energetically infuses Tharp’s grounded yet ecstatic movement vocabulary, connecting the old with the new with such seamlessness that it becomes difficult to identify what exactly makes it so effective and fresh. By the culmination of the program, elation hung in the air; Twyla Tharp Dance had graciously bestowed us with artistic zest thanks to its boundless vitality.
unless noted, photos by Christopher Duggan
Twyla Tharp Dance 2025 Diamond Jubilee
New York City Center
ends on March 16, 2025
