Twyla Tharp celebrated her 60th year of creating stunning and often provocative works at Zellerbach Hall with the West Coast premiere of SLACKTIDE—a new collaboration (2025) with composer Philip Glass, performed live by Chicago’s Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion— Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore—featuring flutist Constance Volk. The score draws inspiration from Glass’s 1993–1999 work, AQUA DE AMAZONIA.
The collaboration among Tharp, Glass, and Third Coast Percussion was genuinely cooperative as they refined the score’s orchestration, adjusting its unique array of chromatically pitched instruments to align with the choreography. This collection includes a glass marimba (Glass on glass?), a sun drum, and a tunable tongue drum, with Volk transforming a classical European flute to imitate the breathy Andean bamboo instrument—“quena.” One of Tharp’s key talents is her deep understanding and appreciation of music, which allows her to interact with the composer and musicians by offering valuable insights into the score’s timing, pacing, and nuances. This marks her first collaboration with Glass in nearly 40 years.
It’s unfortunate that the musicians were hidden in the orchestra pit, where they could not be seen by most of the audience.
Justin Townsend’s lush pastel lighting opened SLACKTIDE with a smoke-filled stage where dancers flowed through the atmospheric mist. Upstage, a sliver of blue light reveals itself, barely reaching the dancers’ knees, before a slowly rising curtain unveils the back scrim bathed in yellow. Townsend uses a different wash of color for each movement of the score, while flirtatious dancers interact playfully with one another as if they are courting adolescents.
The choreography is also light, revisiting signature gestures and movements borrowed from the first dance, DIABELLI VARIATIONS, with dancers randomly introducing a single clap to emphasize specific moments, stepping or leaping over a reclining body below them, or performing low leg extensions with a flexed foot. Midway through, the piece slows into silhouetted duets, with partners dancing in slow motion, bathed in turquoise and accompanied by a raspy flute trill. Most memorable is a breathtaking freeze-frame tableau held near the end of the piece that contrasts with all the preceding movements. This dramatic freeze is unexpected and delightfully out of character.
But first, a revival of DIABELLI (1998), a score and dance featuring variations on variations, with Vladimir Rumyantsev performing live piano. Rumyantsev masterfully navigates Diabelli’s original score of 33 variations on a waltz—a composition that Ludwig van Beethoven skillfully adapted into his Opus 120—before Tharp reimagined it into footsteps. The score’s diverse rhythms and sections help to frame Twyla’s dance.
Clad in sleeveless black-and-white tuxedo jumpsuits (designed by Victoria Bek), reminiscent of whimsical caterers, the ten dancers slide, glide, and leapfrog through fluid ballet movements. They sometimes use jazz hands or engage in farcical combat, all performed at a breakneck Beethoven tempo. The choreography is a collision waiting to happen, yet the dancers’ grace and timing keep it safe and seemingly effortless.
DIABELLI is danced against a black curtain with stark white lighting (Justin Townsend). This contrast emphasizes the dancers’ flailing, exposed arms, highlighted by sleeveless outfits. It minimizes intricate legwork that nearly vanishes with black pants against a black backdrop. Gestures are repeated and vary in speed according to the score.
Both dances are joyous, done solely for the joy of dancing, with little purpose but celebration. Long live Twyla Tharp!
David e. Moreno
