September 2, 2003
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu
The breathtaking and mesmerizing Twyla Tharp Dance
to perform at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- Twyla Tharp Dance
- One of the foremost contemporary dance troupes in the world
- Twyla Tharp is considered America’s greatest living choreographer
- The first Santa Barbara appearance by a Tharp-led group in 24 years
- Friday, October 10 / 8 pm
- UCSB Campbell Hall
- General: $40/$35, UCSB students: $19/$16
- Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Twyla Tharp Dance, one of contemporary dance’s most exciting troupes, on Friday, October 10 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Hailed as America’s greatest living choreographer, Twyla Tharp leads a seven-dancer company noted for boundless energy, endless invention and aching beauty. She has fused classical, modern and jazz dance in a way that catapulted choreography into the 21st century. Creator of the Tony-winning, Billy Joel-scored smash Broadway musical Movin’ Out, Tharp choreographs utterly original work acclaimed for its musicality and dead-on wit. “Tharp’s dancers are miracles of technique and stamina,” praises New York Newsday. “When Tharp sets bodies into motion, you can’t take your eyes off them....a bountiful combination of music and movement that is a glimpse of heaven.”
Twyla Tharp has forged a stunningly successful career. She has choreographed more than 125 dances, including Sue’s Leg, created in residence at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Push Comes to Shove, known as a signature dance for Mikhail Baryshnikov; The Catherine Wheel, set to a score by David Byrne; and In the Upper Room, a collaboration with Philip Glass. Tharp has choreographed five Hollywood movies, including three acclaimed collaborations with director Milos Foreman—Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980) and Amadeus (1984). Her two Broadway shows brought her even further recognition: a reinterpretation of the film classic Singin’ in the Rain in 1985 and the currently running, Tony Award-winning Movin’ Out, set to the music of Billy Joel. Her work has appeared regularly on public television and her special Baryshnikov by Tharp won two Emmy Awards. For all her achievements she has been granted 17 honorary doctorates and numerous grants, including the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
In addition to writing the autobiography Push Comes to Shove in 1992, Tharp will release a new book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (Simon and Schuster) in early October 2003. The Creative Habit takes the lessons Tharp has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career to prove imagination is the product of preparation and effort and in reach of everyone. The book provides more than two dozen specific exercises that will help open the mind to a host of new possibilities.
Tharp formed her latest (fourth) company of Twyla Tharp Dance in 1999. The dancers in the troupe include Emily Coates, formerly of the White Oak Dance Project, who has performed with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara. The program will be comprised of works that span Tharp’s choreographic career and include Westerly Round and Surfer at the River Styx. Set to violinist Mark O’Connor’s “Call of the Mockingbird,” Westerly Round playfully fuses the elegance of the classical ballet vocabulary with the steps and spirit of American folk dance. A loose exploration of Euripides’ Bacchae, Surfer at the River Styx is a dark, thrilling and awe-inspiring athletic work matched by the riveting power of its original percussive score by Donald Knaack [sic].
In a recent review in the Village Voice, Deborah Jowitt wrote: “Tharpwork, like Tharp’s speech in conversations and interviews, flashes and twists in the air, nose-dives, and comes up already soaring. Vernacular asides cap elegance in expression. Virtuosity laughs at itself or becomes a killing force. And the dancers’ bodies seem about five times as articulate, changeable, and at ease in physical ordeal as those in any other troupe, whether we’re talking about the fury of Tharp’s brilliant, shadowy Surfer at the River Styx or the sunny mock-square-dance playfulness of Westerly Round.”
UCSB Arts & Lectures presented an earlier incarnation of Twyla Tharp Dance in February 1978 and March 1979. The upcoming performance is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by the Santa Barbara Independent and the Sandman Inn. Tickets are $40 and $35 for the general public and $19 and $16 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.