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Reed Tankersley

Twyla Tharp Dance: Winter Season 2024

February 20, 2024

Like her masterful Sinatra solo for Mikhail Baryshnikov, “Brel” takes Cornejo from a strolling meditating figure (“Quand On N’A Que l’Amour”) to an anguished lover (“Ne Me Quitte Pas”).  Cornejo twists and thrashes until the song “Amsterdam” had him gliding all over the stage.  The mood rises through “Les Marquises” and “Marieke,” matching Brel’s penchant for crescendo, leading Cornejo into jags of runs, leaps, turns and wilder gestures. Although not as immediate a success as her other ballets to songs, “Brel” will soon be a favorite of solo danseurs all over the ballet world. [more]

Twyla Tharp: Minamalism and Me

December 3, 2018

Her quietly wry, gently self-deprecating autobiographical lecture demonstration, “Minimalism and Me,” was the first half of a program devoted to her early works. These works more often than not caused more chin scratching than accolades.  From the virtually motionless “Tank Dive” to the giddy, if slight, “Eight Jelly Rolls,” her intellectual processes—including stacks of graph paper jottings that guided her and her dancers on stage (or on gymnasium floors, museum exhibition rooms and outdoor spaces)—were sensible yet challenging to the status quo of the 1960’s when she did her first choreographic experiments with her all-female quintet. [more]

Twyla Tharp and Three Dances

July 13, 2016

From 1976, “Country Dances” represented the post-experimental avant-garde phase after breakout success with her ballets for major dance companies. From 1980, there was “Brahms Paganini,” her entrée into her hybrid style combining her eccentric, seemingly casual movements with the classical ballet vocabulary and from 2016, “Beethoven Opus 130,” virtually a classical ballet with quirky touches. [more]

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