Tomorrow night the "All Tharp" program begins at Pacific Northwest Ballet (and runs through October 5--tickets here).

She's pictured here at the end of a rehearsal of the two world premieres on the bill, Opus 111 and Afternoon Ball. At 67, Tharp is feeling like more of classicist: "I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent," she's said. If ballet has caught up with her technical interpolations, she's still sui generis. Opus 111, to Brahms, is both warmly austere and roughly polished movement. Afternoon Ball, she confessed afterward, wasn't meant to be a narrative piece, but "The Little Matchstick Girl" snuck in anyway. Despite the plaudits from the establishment, a part of Tharp's creative soul is still an outsider's, still chilled by alienation, still moving to keep warm.

The third piece comes courtesy of the wayback machine: 1982's Nine Sinatra Songs. We caught a preview of that at Bumbershoot, and it occurred to us that Tharp wasn't slumming--"I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway: I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart"--but was inspired by a kindred spirit--another perfectionist workaholic with an ear for the vernacular. Of course it's glamorous, the gowns and tuxedos, but there's also sweat. Sinatra wore out recording engineers. It's a gift in its own right, her ability to find in the "stuffing" of movement what pure aesthetic might elide, but what is, when you see it, the most human thing.

Photo by Bill Mohn, courtesy of PNB