Leigh Donlan reviewed the Thursday Mar 13th, 2025, performance at New York City Center
Twyla Tharp is still making dance history, celebrating her 60th anniversary with a coast-to-coast Diamond Jubilee tour, and bringing two New York premieres to City Center last week – her monumental Diabelli from 1998, and her newest work, SLACKTIDE. It was an adventure from mapped landscapes to an uncharted sea of invigorating waters.
In Diabelli, solo pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev masterfully played Beethoven’s 33 variations on a theme by Anton Diabelli as ten dancers matched him with variations on their own technical feats. In Geoffrey Beene-designed tuxedo shirts and pants, the ensemble’s skipping and waltzing quickly escalated into turn-on-a-dime switchbacks, aerial lifts, complex turn sequences and an array of inversions, requiring 55 minutes of Olympian strength and stamina. In solos, duets, and larger groupings, Tharp’s typical fusion of ballet, modern and Americana evoked a field of emotions from melancholic introspection to jubilation. In a humorous contest, two men competed for “who’s in front.” Romance was served up in a series of quick back-to-back variations, some soothing, others contentious. Emotions shifted with lightning speed: one somber scene which ended with a dancer lying on the floor bled into a scene in which another dancer leapt gleefully from the floor into the air. All these shifts mirrored the ebb and flow of the score.
SLACKTIDE – a term for the brief, still moment before the reversal of a tidal stream – was stunning, start to finish, was about half the length of Diabelli and just as efficient. Philip Glass’ “Águas da Amazônia,” was played live by Third Coast Percussion, with fantastic flute solos by Constance Volk. Changing colors were projected onto a massive backdrop screen designed by Justin Townsend, intensifying the mood.
The piece began in a dark haze with dancers moving in slow motion, and a lone raised fist lowered (which happened to be the ending image of Tharp’s “In the Upper Room.”) The mood lifted with the rising light and with movement that became loose-limbed and joyful. A section of circles within circles of opposing directions resembled Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements. Clapping and stomping punctuated uninhibited movement. Phrases and sections progressed like rolling waves, layers upon layers of unburdened fluidity. A tango silhouetted against yellow light conveyed intense passion. By contrast, four couples waltzed with blithe abandon at brisk tempi against violet light. There was an overarching sense of freedom and boundlessness. One section froze mid-motion, as if captured in a slack tide, though the music never stopped. The curtain fell on blissful, endless dancing.
At the 60-year mark, Tharp’s body of work numbers a prolific 129 dances (not including her expansive theater, film and television work,) just short of Martha Graham’s 181 works over seven decades. It’s not the numbers, though, but the influence she has had on succeeding generations of dance-makers that sets her apart. At this late stage in her career, of the dozen or so pieces of hers that I’ve seen, SLACKTIDE is my favorite yet – with its sustained liquidity and ephemerality, instinctive and infectious rhythms and tempi and the stunning use of light that seemed to immerse us in a deep oceanic dreamscape.
