Celebrating 50 Years of Dancemaking, Twyla Tharp Returns to Berkeley

With Paul Taylor and Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp is without doubt one of the top three living American choreographers. Taylor has been around longer, and Morris brings his troupe to the Bay Area more often; but Tharp's work, whether for film, TV, Broadway, other dance companies -- from the Paris Opera Ballet to the Martha Graham Dance Company to Hubbard Street Dance Chicago -- or her own may have been seen by more people. By Tharp's count (according to her website), she has choreographed "more than 160 works: 129 dances, 12 television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows, and two figure-skating routines."

After studying dance with both Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, Tharp joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company when she finished college -- and formed her own company, Twyla Tharp Dance, just three years later. It performed original works set to all kinds of music: classical, jazz, contemporary pop. "Deuce Coupe" (1973), choreographed for the Joffrey Ballet to the Beach Boys song, is considered the first "crossover" ballet, though a more renowned example is "Push Comes to Shove" (1976), which featured ballet artist Mikhail Baryshnikov not long after he left the Soviet Union.

Tharp has collaborated with musician David Byrne (The Catherine Wheel) and film directors Miloš Forman (Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus), Taylor Hackford (White Nights), and James Brooks (I'll Do Anything). She has created dance musicals to the music of George Gershwin (Singin' in the Rain), Bob Dylan (The Times They Are a-Changin'), Frank Sinatra (Come Fly with Me, later called Come Fly Away), and Billy Joel (Movin' Out, for which Tharp won a Tony Award).

But before all those dances, films and television specials, Broadway shows and figure-skating routines came "Tank Dive" (1965), to songs by then-popular British pop singer Petulia Clark. Fifty years later, Cal Performances has made sure that Berkeley is one of the 17 cities on the Twyla Tharp 50th Anniversary Tour. Tharp is bringing the 13 members of her troupe here for the weekend of Oct. 17.

You won't be seeing "Tank Dive" on the program, though, nor any other of her celebrated pieces. "Preludes and Fugues," to Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier," will see its Bay Area premiere. Framing the performance are dances set to music by the great eclectic jazz artist John Zorn: "First Fanfare," to "Antiphonal Fanfare for the Great Hall," performed by The Practical Trumpet Society, and "Second Fanfare," to "In Excelsis," performed by the American Brass Quintet.

Finally, in another Bay Area premiere, we'll see "Yowzie," set to seven jazz pieces, from Wesley Wilson's "Gimme a Pigfoot" to Jelly Roll Morton's "Buddy Bolden's Blues" to Henry Butler's "Henry's Boogie," performed by Butler, Steven Bernstein, and the Hot 9.

"Simply put, 'Preludes and Fugues' is the world as it ought to be, 'Yowzie' as it is. The 'Fanfares' celebrate both," says Tharp.

You want to celebrate an artist who, after such a long and storied career, has no interest in a mere retrospective. It might have been fun -- for the audience -- to see historic dances like "Tank Dive" and old favorites too numerous to mention. Simply put, this lineup is far more exciting. Bach, Zorn, and Buddy Bolden, Tharp's continued inspiration, and her 13 terrific dancers. Yowzie!

Oct. 16-18, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, 510.642.9988, calperformances.org.

Photograph: Twyla Tharp Dance members Ron Todorowski, Amy Ruggiero, and John Selya perform in the Bay Area premiere of Yowzie.
Ruven Afanador, used with permission of Cal Performances