Choreographer
Twyla Tharp
Music
Miguel Nunes
Performer
Carlos Acosta
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Twyla Tharp
Sadler's Wells
2 - 5 July 2003
Twyla Tharp's prodigious imagination, energy and dedication to her art - still relentless after thirty years - were palpable in each of her four works at Sadler's Wells. She is one of those rare people who bring freshness to everything they do. Even choreographic clichés - very familiar movements and formations that are part of the repertoire of almost all contemporary dance - feel bright and sharp and fascinatingly mercurial under her touch.
The first piece, Know By Heart Duet (premiered 2001), was, in almost every sense, a classic pas de deux - yet it appeared contemporary in a way that many (most?) choreographers who seek to break entirely from tradition are unable to achieve. Matthew Dibble and Lynda Sing whirled their way through this melancholy yet subtly playful score, without losing the flow for a moment, their feet, muscles and reactions all moving like lightening from one beautifully turned phrase to the next.
Tharp makes the two dancers play, fight, tease and make up in just the way you would find in any high school romance - with due deference to modern day girl power. No 19th Century demure female or cock-sure male here.
The Fugue, which followed, couldn't be more different. This was early Tharp (1970), and pullulated with groundbreaking ideas. No music, clusters of dancers moving alertly but opaquely to the beat of their own footfalls, extraordinary internal coherence - this must rank among the great achievements of modern dance, itself one of the areas in which the spirit of our age finds its most powerful expression.
Westerly Round (2001) was less absorbing. Its sunny charm became, for this reviewer, tedious and its gestures mechanical. Perhaps it was simply outshone by what preceded it.
And by what followed. Surfer on the River Styx (2000), which closed the evening, was charged with menace, eroticism, and an atmosphere compounded of different shades of darkness - all beautifully evoked by the dancers, and especially by Matthew Dibble, Lynda Sing and Emily Coates. The programme notes tell you that the work concludes with a 'beatific apotheosis', but to me it concluded with anguished affirmation - which is something quite different and much more interesting.
Simon May
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