Review: A Tharp Master Class on Themes, Variations and Allusions

In the middle of Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations,” from 1823, the pianist’s left hand starts rocking up and down the keyboard in a pattern that sounds uncannily like boogie-woogie from the 1930s and ’40s. For a choreographer courageous enough to tackle that score, this is low-hanging fruit. It’s easy to be witty by having the dancers jitterbug, with women tossed over the shoulders of their partners and hung upside down.

Twyla Tharp does this in her “Diabelli Variations” (1998), but the difference between Tharp and other choreographers is that by this point in her dance, the over-the-shoulder lift has already been introduced (and earned a laugh). Theme and variations is an ideal form for her brilliant mind, and her “Diabelli” is a masterwork.

What’s more, with Tharp the jitterbug moves aren’t just an allusion to a seemingly incongruous historical rhyme; they’re an allusion to herself and her signature way of mixing American social dances into her American classicism.

At New York City Center on Wednesday, Tharp’s “Diabelli Variations” had its New York debut as part of a tour celebrating her 60th year as a choreographer. That’s a lot of past to draw upon. The little-seen “Diabelli” is a treasure from the vault, but its new companion piece, “Slacktide,” is full of fruitful recycling and repurposing, too.

The challenge of the Beethoven score (excellently played at City Center by Vladimir Rumyantsev) is its one-thing-after-another quality, an hour of music divided by 33. There has to be enough repetition and backward references to hold the dance together but also enough transformation to keep it surprising and moving forward. Like a form-producing machine on overdrive — symmetry and asymmetry, duets doubled and tripled, five-part canons! — Tharp maximizes both.

Beethoven took a mediocre theme by Anton Diabelli as material with which to demonstrate his own unparalleled virtuosity. Tharp takes Beethoven’s virtuosity as a partner for hers, and that of her 10 terrific dancers. As she introduces her movement motifs and shows how they change in different choreographic and musical contexts, she continually marks details in the score. But unlike choreographers who follow the map of the music, Tharp creates her own. She might repeat a section exactly, or with a twist, but not because Beethoven does.