Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance

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For more than four decades, Twyla Tharp has been a phenomenon in American dance, a choreographer who not only broke the rules but refused to repeat her own successes. At the conclusion of Howling Near Heaven, Marcia Siegel writes about the thrill of watching Tharp choreograph in 1991: "Tharp's movement can be planned or spontaneous, personal, funny, hard as hell, precise enough to look thrown away. She doesn't so much invent or create it, she prepares for it. Crusty, driven, demanding, and admiring, she hurls ...

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Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance

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Overview

For more than four decades, Twyla Tharp has been a phenomenon in American dance, a choreographer who not only broke the rules but refused to repeat her own successes. At the conclusion of Howling Near Heaven, Marcia Siegel writes about the thrill of watching Tharp choreograph in 1991: "Tharp's movement can be planned or spontaneous, personal, funny, hard as hell, precise enough to look thrown away. She doesn't so much invent or create it, she prepares for it. Crusty, driven, demanding, and admiring, she hurls challenges at the dancers. Brave, virtuosic, and cheerful, they volley back what she gives them and more. She watches them. They watch her. It's the most subtle form of competition and cooperation, a process so intuitive, so intimate, that no one can say whose dance it is in the end, and none of the parties to that dance can be removed without endangering its identity. The same is true for all theatrical dance making, all over the world, only most of it isn't so inspired or obsessed."

Starting in the rebellious 1960s, Tharp tried her creative wings on minimalism, pedestrianism, and Dada, then abandoned both the avant-garde and the established modern dance. She thrilled a new audience with her witty version of jazz in Eight Jelly Rolls, then merged her dancers with the Joffrey Ballet for the sensational Deuce Coupe, to the music of the Beach Boys. She explored the classical world in Push Comes to Shove, for the American Ballet Theater and the celebrated Russian virtuoso Mikhail Baryshnikov. For her touring company in the 1970s and 1980s, an unprecedented fusion of modern dancers and ballet dancers, she created a superb repertory that included the theatrical full-length work The Catherine Wheel, the ballroom duets Nine Sinatra Songs, and the company showcase Baker's Dozen.

Tharp has made movies, television specials, and nearly one hundred riveting dance works. Movin' Out, the dance show that reflected on the Vietnam era using the music of Billy Joel, ran on Broadway for three years and won Tharp a Tony award for Best Choreography.

Howling Near Heaven is the first in-depth study of Twyla Tharp's unique, restless creativity, the story of a choreographer who refused to be pigeonholed and the dancers who accompanied her as she sped across the frontiers of dance.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Twyla Tharp is one of the most highly regarded choreographers working today; she reinvented modern dance by marrying it to jazz and classical ballet in her own witty, athletic, musically sophisticated style. Veteran dance critic Siegel (The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance) offers an in-depth look at Tharp's work, placing it in a historical, social, cultural, political and artistic context. Tharp began inventing her choreographic approach in the '60s, winning over audiences at the avant-garde Judson Church with Eight Jelly Rolls. She then conquered the ballet world with Deuce Coupe for the Joffrey Ballet and Push Comes to Shove for American Ballet Theatre. She has gone on to create an enduring repertoire as well as a Broadway hit, Movin' Out, with Billy Joel. Siegel provides a wealth of insight into the choreographer's groundbreaking movement vocabulary and its development over four decades. Siegel quotes extensively from dance critics, including Arlene Croce and Deborah Jowitt. While these quotes and Siegel's own spare, tight observations are illuminating, there's little "howling" to be heard. The book could have used more from the "crusty, driven, demanding" choreographer herself. Still, this is a thoughtful record of Tharp's oeuvre and a must for theater and dance scholars and aficionados. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Noted dance critic Siegel (The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance) examines the life and work of modern dance legend Twyla Tharp in prose as spare and elegant as her subject's choreography. Drawing on a variety of sources (much like Tharp herself), the author chronicles Tharp's work for the stage (dance and Broadway), screen (film, television, and video), and even ice (for Olympic ice skater John Curry), careful to point out how she did not repeat her successes. These include, of course, Eight Jelly Rolls (music by Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Chili Peppers), Deuce Coupe (music by the Beach Boys), the recent Movin' Out, and the choreography for the films Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus. In the final chapter, Siegel sums up Tharp's choreography like this: "Tharp's movement can be planned or spontaneous, personal, funny, hard as hell, precise enough to look thrown-away. She doesn't so much invent or create it, she prepares for it." This concise, thoroughly researched book will prepare readers to meet one of the greats. Recommended for all performing arts collections.-Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312232948
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 3/7/2006
  • Edition description: First Edition
  • Pages: 336
  • Product dimensions: 6.34 (w) x 9.46 (h) x 1.29 (d)

Meet the Author

Marcia B. Siegel's career as a dance writer spans the same years as Twyla Tharp's choreography. A contributing editor to the Hudson Review and dance critic for the Boston Phoenix, Siegel has been a regular reviewer for New York magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Soho Weekly News, and has written for journals and periodicals in the U.S. and Europe. Biographer of modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey and author of the classic study The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance, she has also published three collections of reviews and essays. Marcia Siegel was the 2004 Senior Critic Honoree of the Dance Critics Association, and in 2005 she received the CORD award for Outstanding Contributions to Dance Research.

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