Deuce Coupe is fresh and exciting because it is closer to its source in popular culture than most pop or "jazz" ballets ever care to be.
--Arlene Croce, The New Yorker, Oct. 29 1973.
I find it difficult to figure out Twyla Tharp; Steven Cantor's film for PBS is of little help. He covers her career from modern dancer and choreographer to her present choreographing on Zoom in detail, with a wealth of documentation but no comments from dance critics or writers. Tharp's work has given me much pleasure over the years, from Deuce Coupe for the Joffrey and her own company to Movin' Out in 2002 on Broadway, with music by Billy Joel. When she was still dancing she reminded one of Buster Keaton, with her deadpan expression, and in 1976 she did Push Comes to Shove on Keaton-like Mikhail Baryshnikov. She started out doing modern dance without music, moved to dance with popular music and then eventually after the death of Balanchine moved more directly into ballet, doing two ballets for NYC Ballet: Brahms/Handel (1984, co-choreographed with Jerome Robbins; it was obvious who had done what in the choreography) and Beethoven Seventh, neither of which has been performed in the last fifteen years.
Tharp has choreographed more than 160 dances for her own company, ballet companies, movies, Broadway and even for ice dancer John Curry. Tharp has a distinctive and idosyncratic style, with unusual port de bras and use of turnout as well as intense relationship to the music and a deadpan sense of humor (she did a piece for The Martha Graham company that was a subtle parody of the Graham style!). How much of this work will continue to be danced remains to be seen, but in Cantor's documentary she is still hard at work -- as she is about to turn eighty -- choreographing a piece with Misty Copeland, Herman Cornejo and Maria Khoreva via video conference.
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