Twyla Tharp Dance

Friday, February 7, 2025 8 pm
Zellerbach Auditorium UC Berkeley

Excellent performance: Repetitive Rhythms

The Twyla Tharp Dance Company performed two works at Zellerbach Auditorium to a welcoming ‘new year’ audience of devoted Cal supporters. First on the program was “Diabelli” choreographed in 1998. The music, played live by pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev, was Beethoven’s “33 variations on a Waltz” by Diabelli. The music and the attentive audience both presented an enormous challenge.

Tharp’s company of ten dancers are talented, skilled and precise in their range and variety of dance technique and indeed wonderful to watch. Yet, Tharp’s choreography, challenging and varied as it is, presents a constant series of entrances and exits. Sometimes the stage is full; more often soloists and duets appear for short sections, then are reorganized into larger group.

This choreographic design is central to both works on the program. “Slacktide” (a 2025 West Coast Premiere), although lighter and more playful in character and movement, uses the same patterns. There are delightful duets and trios between the men dancers interspersed with acrobatic duets for men/women partners. Some solos (many consisting of humorous movement) provide a light quality to the live music by the Third Coast Percussion (and Constance Volk, flute.) The score is entitled “Agnuas da Amazonia” by Philip Glass, a delightful work. (Costuming was varied, although all dancers were in black. Shorts on dancers legs cut the line…not a good choice.)

Tharp has been a renowned choreographer in the ‘modern dance’ world and has received numerous honors and awards. Her dancers appear to be fundamentally ballet trained, although they adapt to the movement ‘quirks’ that Tharp demands. As my guest remarked, “Although the music in almost entirely different, both dance works begin to look…and feel alike in a short time.”

The dancers are: Angela Falk, Zachery Gonder, Oliver Greene-Cramer, Kyle Halford, Daisy Jacobson, Miriam Gittens, Nicole Ashley Morris, Marzia Memoli, Alexander Peters, Molly Rumble, Reed Tankersley. Applause and kudos to the dancers and the musicians, all extremely skilled and talented.

Tharp, although she is a “master” of her craft, might refresh the style and shape of her choreography so that audiences can follow the many variations and remember the movement.