Twyla Tharp Dance

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distinctive vocabulary based on versatility, musicality, and heart-stopping technical brilliance — not to mention piquant accessibility.

Tharp started out in the 1960s as a postmodernist, sharing that movement's experimental commitment to everyday steps like walking and an intellectualized, less-is-more aesthetic. But then she decided it was okay to dance — really dance — to music. In 1973 she set Deuce Coupe to a string of fourteen Beach Boys hits for the Joffrey Ballet. Tharp has been in impossibly high demand ever since, choreographing for ballet and modern dance companies alike, as well as, from 1965 to 1988, for her own troupe, the first incarnation of Twyla Tharp Dance. Her work is distinguished by a seamless and often surprising structure of pure movement: complex yet playful, rigorous yet harmonious. It's the kind of giddy dance charge that leaves you bouncing up the aisle afterward.

The reimagined Twyla Tharp Dance, assembled in summer 2000, is made up of top-notch talent from the American Ballet Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, and the New York City Ballet — two women and four men — all of whom contribute their own spirited interpretations and expansive technique to Tharp's inventive vernacular.