At 83, choreography pioneer Twyla Tharp’s major purpose has remained the identical over her 60-year profession.
“It is to work,” says Tharp, whose troupe seems in Berkeley on Feb. 7-9. Cal Performances’ “Twyla Tharp Dance Diamond Jubilee” contains two West Coast premieres: a revival of 1998’s “Diabelli” and 2025’s “Slacktide” set to music by Philip Glass.
Tharp, an innovator whose 1973 crossover piece “Deuce Coupe” set to music by the Seaside Boys blended ballet and fashionable dance, has choreographed greater than 160 works. She cites George Balanchine and Martha Graham, with their “rigor and passion,” as necessary influences. The dancemaker, who fashioned her troupe in 1965 in New York Metropolis, continues to use a minimalist strategy.
“I have evolved by learning to build dance from a beginning with only myself and no music or other production elements into multifaceted works,” she says.
Pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev performs Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” in “Twyla Tharp Dance Diamond Jubilee.” (Courtesy Vladimir Rumyantsev)
“Diamond Jubilee’s” four-month nationwide tour, which began Jan. 26 on the College of Minnesota’s Northrop theater, opens with “Diabelli,” set to Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations.” The 1823 composition of 33 fiendishly demanding variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli is carried out dwell by Russian pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev.
Tharp took on the formidable problem of setting a dance to Beethoven’s complicated piece by having the dancers transfer from classical to jazz to fashionable types. She discovered the expertise each useful and daunting.
“The value of the ‘Diabelli Variations’ lies in Beethoven’s ability to muster an enormous range of transformations on a received, rather pedantic theme,” she says. “Lesson learned: where there is a will there is a way.”
Although “Diabelli” is predicated on a layered, thought-provoking composition, the roughly one-hour work for 11 dancers, with costumes by Geoffrey Beene, reveals a light-hearted aspect to Beethoven’s masterpiece.
“Diabelli,” a 1998 dance set to Beethoven, is in “Twyla Tharp Dance Diamond Jubilee” in College of California, Berkeley’s Zellerbach Corridor on Feb. 7-9. (Photograph by Mark Seliger/Courtesy Cal Performances)
“The work’s appeal for the audience is its visual representation of Beethoven’s theatrical imagination, including his humor,” Tharp explains.
The “Diamond Jubilee” fast-forwards nearly 200 years from Beethoven’s time to the current, with “Slacktide,” set to Glass’ 1999 “Aguas da Amazonia,” which addresses the difficulty of local weather change.
“‘Slacktide’ references the moment of absolute stillness between the incoming and outgoing tides,” Tharp says. “The dance is a meditation on time.”
In distinction to “Diabelli’s” smooth apparel by Beene and uniform lighting, the 30-minute “Slacktide” options 12 dancers in costumes designed by Victoria Bek and bathed in colourful lighting by Justin Townsend.
The piece is Tharp’s first collaboration with Glass in almost 40 years. Her 1986 dance “In the Upper Room” is ready to the composer’s iconic “The Upper Room,” which she commissioned. And the primary motion of “Slacktide” is taken from the ultimate motion of “In the Upper Room.” (The work premiered as “Untitled” and the title “In the Upper Room” got here into print in 1987.)
Third Coast Percussion seems within the Twyla Tharp Dance program in Berkeley on Feb. 7-9. (Photograph by Marc Perlish/Courtesy Cal Performances)
Glass composed “Aguas da Amazonia” (in Portuguese, “Waters of the Amazon”) as a dance rating for a Brazilian ballet firm. It was carried out by musicians within the group Uakti who created unique devices from Brazilian-sourced supplies for the piece.
Like Uakti, the Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion group, which seems in “Diamond Jubilee” performances of “Slacktide” (joined by flutist Constance Volk), additionally created unique devices, typically with odd objects like items of wooden or metallic pipes.
Tharp says Third Coast’s association enriches the composition, notably with variations in sure sections: “The fifth and eighth sections of ‘Slacktide’ are a passacaglia on a single theme, which Third Coast’s arrangement augments.”
Cal Performances presents “Twyla Tharp Dance Diamond Jubilee” at 8 p.m. Feb. 7-8 and three p.m. Feb. 9 in Zellerbach Corridor, close to Bancroft Approach and Dana Road on the College of California, Berkeley campus. Tickets are $25-$130 at (510) 642-9988 or calperformances.org.
