Tharp's Two World Premieres Spotlight PNB Stars

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Jonathan Porretta and Carrie Imler in Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs. (© Angela Sterling)

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Twyla Tharp had eight weeks with Pacific Northwest Ballet to get to know the dancers and rehearse--and even decide that she would choreograph the third movement of Brahms' Opus 111 after all. The extra time and immersion shows--the dancers look crisp and committed, even in these challenging works that marry a self-engendered joie de vivre with wry humor, a populist eye, and uneasy foreboding.

The three pieces of PNB's All Tharp program (at McCaw Hall through October 5th; tickets: $25 to $155) stretch the connective tissue of dance--they're choreographic leaps that Tharp has made in different directions, reflecting the improvisatory nature of her creative process.

Opus 111, titled after the 1890 Brahms string quintet for two violins, two violas, and cello, presents five couples who dance duets, split into male and female ensembles, and join for a rousing folk-dance finale. This is the piece about which Tharp confessed to channeling sentiment for the natural world into classicism, and its tonal home is classical ballet, though Tharp's mood is quicksilver.

There's footwork you could find in a dance from the Old Country, and and cocked hips from Broadway, but in the pas de deux with Ariana Lallone and Stanko Milov we're shown something come to life off the side of Keats's urn. You don't have to be a genius to spotlight Lallone, but it's a pleasure to see how Tharp's choreography accentuates her long-limbed lines so organically. Similarly, Tharp gives Kiyon Gaines a chance for some pared-down explosiveness--the steps are folk-dance elevated by vitality, not vertical leap. Given the contrast, and how well all the dancers responded, this was our favorite piece.

Tharp turned to a contemporary minimalist work by Vladimir Martynov (Autumn Ball of the Elves) for her Afternoon Ball; it's a motoric, obsessive piece of music, and Tharp has crafted a quasi-narrative to go with. The costumes by Mark Zappone could work for extras in Rent, and the mode is modern dance-inflected though still balletic: guest star Charlie Neshyba-Hodges (who'll always have a dance career to fall back on if his studies at the UW's architecture school don't work out) shines as a hybrid creature who can hold his own in both ballet and modern dance technique. "He can really wiggle!" one elderly ballet patron whispered to another.

The work seethes with street-level angst and violence and need, lit atmospherically by Randall Chiarelli; Kaori Nakamura and Olivier Wevers join Neshyba-Hodges, with Wevers as an agitated third wheel. Ariana and Stanko return as a dreamed of, idealized duo. As with Opus, the work is notable in that the emotional interior is almost entirely expressed in movement--these are not characters who happen to dance, but characters of dance. The audience sprang from their seats at the closing notes.

Tharp's now-classic Nine Sinatra Songs was the finale, a pageant of Oscar de la Renta dresses and tuxedos with a giant disco ball spinning overhead--on one level, like the best episode of "Dancing with the Stars" ever. On the other, the collection reminded us strongly of Goya's Capriccios--here, distillations of romantic interaction in the language of tango, flamenco, even exhibition disco.

In "One for my Baby," Maria Chapman and Anton Pankevitch climb drunkenly over each other in an edgily visceral account of that kind of an evening--made more affecting by Chapman's elegance and Pankevitch's Daniel-Craig-as-Bond build. Carrie Imler and Jonathan Porretta find Tharp's physical humor in "Somethin' Stupid," offering a multitude of romantic miscoordinations, but staying this side of slapstick. Louise Nadeau and Seth Orza like it rough in "That's Life," or maybe better said, they like it forceful. It's almost surreal watching them grasp and grope and drag on the same stage that they've fluttered a wrist just so, to great effect.

It's easy to see why the piece is a classic--Sinatra's world-weary, battered baritone conjures up personal flashbacks for anyone old enough to have been there, but Tharp didn't give in to the soliloquy--her sketches present couples, their fresh love, their disillusionment, passion, heedlessness, argument, desire. It's a corrective vision for anyone who thinks Sinatra said best--if he did, he said it best for both. Tharp's relentlessly dyadic version makes it clear why anyone would ever come back for more.