In the middle of Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations,” from 1823, the pianist’s left hand starts rocking up and down the keyboard in a pattern that sounds uncannily like boogie-woogie from the 1930s and ’40s. For a choreographer courageous enough to tackle that score, this is low-hanging fruit. It’s easy to be witty by having the dancers jitterbug, with women tossed over the shoulders of their partners and hung upside down.
Twyla Tharp does this in her “Diabelli” (1998), but the difference between Tharp and other choreographers is that by this point in her dance, the over-the-shoulder lift has already been introduced (and earned a laugh). Theme and variations is an ideal form for her brilliant mind, and her “Diabelli” is a masterwork.
What’s more, with Tharp the jitterbug moves aren’t just an allusion to a seemingly incongruous historical rhyme; they’re an allusion to herself and her signature way of mixing American social dances into her American classicism.
At New York City Center on Wednesday, Tharp’s “Diabelli” had its New York debut as part of a tour celebrating her 60th year as a choreographer. That’s a lot of past to draw upon. The little-seen “Diabelli” is a treasure from the vault, but its new companion piece, “Slacktide,” is full of fruitful recycling and repurposing, too.
The challenge of the Beethoven score (excellently played at City Center by Vladimir Rumyantsev) is its one-thing-after-another quality, an hour of music divided by 33. There has to be enough repetition and backward references to hold the dance together but also enough transformation to keep it surprising and moving forward. Like a form-producing machine on overdrive — symmetry and asymmetry, duets doubled and tripled, five-part canons! — Tharp maximizes both.
Beethoven took a mediocre theme by Anton Diabelli as material with which to demonstrate his own unparalleled virtuosity. Tharp takes Beethoven’s virtuosity as a partner for hers, and that of her 10 terrific dancers. As she introduces her movement motifs and shows how they change in different choreographic and musical contexts, she continually marks details in the score. But unlike choreographers who follow the map of the music, Tharp creates her own. She might repeat a section exactly, or with a twist, but not because Beethoven does.
Because she is Tharp, the grand design incorporates vaudeville gags. Dancers bump into each other, face-off, mock fight. One section for two men plays with the old “I’m in front — no I’m in front” bit, which Tharp mines for its classic humor and revives with clever variation. But even these comedy bits are ultimately just movement material. When Tharp brings them back, they might be tender or pure form.
Throughout, Tharp distributes little suggestions of interpersonal relationships and dramatic situations. (She can do that, too.) A few duets go further, expanding into resonant scenes. In one, a woman is searching for something or someone but it’s not the man with her; he rolls on the floor, and she steps over him unaware.
For Tharp aficionados, the tuxedo fronts on Geoffrey Beene’s sleeveless costumes for “Diabelli” recall Kermit Love’s sleeveless, backless tuxedos for Tharp’s “Eight Jelly Rolls” (1971). In “Slacktide,” Tharp’s self-allusion is even more specific: It’s the first move, isolated in light: a raised fist pulled down, which is also the final gesture from “In the Upper Room” (1986).
“In the Upper Room” had a score by Philip Glass, and so does “Slacktide”: his “Águas da Amazônia,” in a new arrangement played live by Third Coast Percussion. Where in “Upper Room” the fist is yanked down, here it is lowered slowly. The dancers move in slow-motion, as if underwater.
As if out of the murk, another current surfaces: a loose, limb flinging, heavily torqued wildness. Alongside this movement contrast, Tharp incorporates fragments of story. At one point, the dancers look like tourists; at another, like the guys and girls groupings in “Grease.” It all merges into a flow that threatens to stall but doesn’t. Kind of like Tharp’s creativity.
Programmed after “Diabelli,” the much shorter “Slacktide” might have looked like an afterthought. Many of Tharp’s recyclings in recent pieces have seemed like worn-out chewing gum (a Tharp simile) or lazy shorthand, but this new work — set to Glass, the arch-self-plagiarizer, who took a bow on Wednesday — is fresh enough to hold its own. As the Glass score is obviously a Glass piece, “Slacktide” is obviously a Tharp, and a good one.
The measure of quality isn’t whether Tharp is repeating herself but how. And it’s important she doesn’t allude only to herself. “Diabelli” is chock-full of nods to predecessors. I spotted some Agnes de Mille, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor and, of course, George Balanchine.
One of central motifs of “Diabelli” and its final move — a fall that ends with the dancer stretched out along the floor — comes from Balanchine’s 1934 “Serenade.” It’s just a fall that Tharp uses like any other bit of movement material. But she knows what it means. It’s a nod to the past that connects her to a pantheon. A bold move, but not an unjustified one.
Twyla Tharp Dance
Through Sunday at New York City Center; nycitycenter.org
Dancing,Classical Music,New York City Center Theater,Third Coast Percussion (Music Group),Tharp, Twyla,Glass, Philip,Diabelli (Dance (Non-Ballet)),Slacktide (Dance (Non-Ballet))
