Madeleine Graham and Allister Madin, of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Photo / Jeremy Brick
Twyla Tharp talks with Joanna Mathers about why movement is vital and working with New Zealand dancers via Zoom.
Life is movement, quickening in the womb, the brush of lovers' fingers. In dance, movement is at its most exalted. The leaps and contortions and convolutions hint at possibilities beyond the flesh, the truth of the physical.
Movement is Twyla Tharp's language. At 79, the legendary choreographer and original purveyor of "crossover ballet" engages in a daily morning routine of extreme movement. Up at 5.30am, into her home studio: breathing exercises, stretches, cycling, weights.
"My body is geared to work this way, at a certain hour," she says. "This is the way I start my day."
It's early evening on a New York City Monday and Tharp is discussing, among other things, the Royal New Zealand Ballet's staging of her 1994, Waterbaby Bagatelles.
She's says that she's delighted that her aquatically themed work will mark the first post-Covid show by a major ballet company in the world (this was before community transmission was discovered in Auckland).
Waterbaby Bagatelles is a work that features seven short pieces (bagatelles are short musical compositions) originally created for the Boston Ballet. While they traditionally relate to classical works, the oldest bagatelle here is by 20th century composer Anton Webern. Also included is John Lurie's Bella by Barlight, from Jim Jarmusch's 1984 film Stranger than Paradise.
Set in a fantasy swimming pool, with illumination recalling that of an aquarium, the dancers appear, in parts, to resemble schools of fish. The men are bare of chest, the female dancers donning bathing caps.
I'm interested in the theme: does Tharp have a particular affinity with water? The languidity of movement; the aqua-tinted fluorescent lighting that rises and falls, wavelike, point to a deep understanding of the element.
"To be completely honest with you, I can't swim," she confides. "I'm actually very envious of the idea of being in the water but instead of bemoaning this, I made it into a dance."
Tharp's career in dance began in the 1960s. Her first dance, Tank Dive, was choreographed in 1965. But it was Deuce Coupe that brought her international acclaim, the dance in which she mixed modern and classical dance in a cross-pollination, resulting in the world's first crossover ballet.
Deuce Coupe was reprised last year by American Ballet Theatre for a retrospective (Tharp Trio, which included two more of her important works). As a choreographer, she is well-used to reimagining her older material but for Deuce Coupe she was asked, in essence, to reimagine herself.
"I had to replace myself [she was one the leads in the original]. But I got over that quickly. I've never seen myself as the 'star', but one of the performers."
The greater challenge, she says, was establishing how the then "radical" elements of the original dance (the use of Beach Boys music, live graffiti artists) would translate nearly 50 years on.
"When I created Deuce Coupe, the use of pop music in the context of a classical ballet company was unheard-of. At the time, graffiti artists were outlaws – the people who created graffiti on stage for the show were wanted by the police.
"Now the music of the Beach Boys is 'classic' and street art is the way to go; it's in all the galleries. So, the landmarks of that work have become classics themselves."
How did Deuce Coupe translate to stage, all these years on?
"In sum, I think it accomplished some of what it wanted. It has become a classic. And the younger audience loved it."
Tharp's creativity urge is irrepressible. Alongside her work as a dancer and choreographer, she has written four books (her biography Push Comes to Shove; The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life; The Collaborative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life; and most recently
Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life).
She "doesn't pretend to be a writer" but applies a similar creative process to this as she does to dance.
"I have a framework that I use for both writing and dance. I jot down scraps of this and that: these pieces may become a section of a dance or a phrase of writing and this just gets bigger and bigger. The process is very similar, except that when I'm writing I use the early hours of the day to write and the rest of the time I use for dance and movement."
She says that she doesn't enjoy writing: "The process is loathsome. It's not a pleasure at all, and it's nowhere near as rewarding as choreography. I find it very laboured."
But she does enjoy language, especially when it's used within music. Her "jukebox musical" Movin' Out featured the songs of Billy Joel; she also created Nine Sinatra Songs with Frank Sinatra's works used as the basis for dance.
"When I work with language in dance, it is sung and I need to have a sense of the poetry of the lyrics, the pacing of the phrasing to create the choreography," she says.
Outside of this context, she is suspicious of language's slipperiness. She feels it is an ineffective tool within which to frame dance.
"Language is the telling of story to an individual or to a group, but the world of dance can give you the absolute. Dance deals with truth, not stories, just physical truth. It's the gut response delivered visibly and coherently."
In the past, Tharp has refrained from "addressing anything linguistically before the curtain went up", preferring the work to speak for itself.
However, she also enjoyed doing lecture dances, "lifting up the hood and explaining how things work. But I don't confuse this with the way that dance speaks."
I wonder, if dance cannot be explained with written language, what is the role of the reviewer, the critic?
She believes that the role of the reviewer has, with the advent of widely available video, been undermined. People are able to see the movement themselves, there is no intermediary, the authority of the reviewer crumbles.
We discuss the possibility of ever being able to write meaningfully about dance as an artform. When I ask her about descriptions of the works on her website, she bristles slightly.
"We have a policy of having no quotes whatsoever on the site. They are synopses written by me and [academics who specialise in dance]. They are a superficial, tip-of-the-iceberg explanation of what the thing is. There are no references to reviews at all."
The world of dance has been in stasis since Covid-19. Given the restrictions imposed on much of the world, how can dance, a medium that doesn't exist without an audience, survive?
"I can't possibly speak of the state of dance across the world," she says. "But I am making work via Zoom that is intended to live within that container."
She speaks about an extraordinary collaboration between dancers across time zones (Manhattan, Denmark, Los Vegas, St Petersburg) on Zoom, performing a piece in unison.
"The dancer in St Petersburg had a three-second lag on Zoom, so she had to jump three seconds ahead of the music to make it work. She did it but that didn't surprise me, because she is a dancer."
She tells me that during a Zoom meeting with the Royal New Zealand Ballet the night before, she elucidated what being a "dancer" meant.
"I told them that they were both a representation of us as mortals; but at the same time, they were superhuman. Dancers are incredible people."
The staging of Waterbaby Bagatelles in New Zealand has come about in part due to RNZB's artistic director Patricia Baker's association with Tharp. Barker was appointed artistic director in 2017, after years as one of the United States pre-eminent dancers, choreographers and directors.
"Patricia worked with us before New Zealand snagged her," Tharp chuckles.
"She has worked with Shelley Washington [long-time Tharp collaborator and her personal stager] to recreate Waterbabies and she has done it brilliantly."
Washington spent time with the Royal New Zealand Ballet prior to the first Covid-19 lockdown, walking the dancers through the intricacies of the piece. She's spent decades working alongside Tharp; studying with her and becoming part of the Twyla Tharp Dance Company in 1975. Working with companies across the world to bring Tharp's pieces to life: her ability and enthusiasm is legendary.
Tharp says that while she's never been to New Zealand, "It's one of the rare countries I would spend hours on a plane to visit."
And she is delighted that one of her works has been chosen as part of the Venus Rising programme.
"It's a very demanding ballet, and touring is incredibly demanding. But New Zealand has done so incredibly well [throughout Covid] and it's a really big deal."
While Tharp won't be attending the performances in person, they will be filmed for her and become part of her Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation archives.
"I'm not a good sport when it comes to getting up at 2am to watch something live from the other side of the world - but I will be seeing them on video."
While the world fits and starts in and out of lockdown, Tharp's unstoppable energy is being channelled into a project with PBS, creating an American Masters series on her life and work.
The project was launched prior to Covid-19 but Tharp has been trawling through the extensive archival footage to discover appropriate material. She also has her work via Zoom, working on new dances internationally. She's managed to make the situation work for her.
"Yes, lockdown have been demoralising. This is a city in which people are used to being jammed in together and everyone is confused. And I have kept up my discipline [of work and exercise]."
At this stage, preparations for the world premiere of Venus Rising, taking place in Wellington on Thursday (August 20) and the subsequent national tour are continuing as planned until they hear whether alert level 2 across the country (excluding Auckland) will continue beyond Saturday, August 15. If the performance schedule changes to reflect new Government restrictions, ticket-holders will be advised and given a full refund.
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