28 minutes
April 30, 1994
Boston Ballet
November 2, 2006
20th-century bagatelles (Anton Webern: Sehr langsam, excerpt from Six Bagatelles, Op. 9; Kevin Volans: White Man Sleeps #5; John Lurie: Bella by Barlight; David Lang: The Anvil Chorus; Astor Piazzolla: Fear, from Five Tango Sensations; Mickey Hart: The Hunt; John Adams: On the Dominant Divide [Part II of Grand Pianola Music])
The 2006 Pacific Northwest Ballet premiere of Twyla Tharp’s Waterbaby Bagatelles was generously underwritten in part by Aya Stark Hamilton and Carl & Renee Behnke.
Bagatelles are short and unpretentious musical compositions. Twyla Tharp’s array of ballet bagatelles is danced on the pristine surface of a stage overhung and aqueously lighted by rows of fluorescent light tubes, like those that might illuminate an aquarium. The mostly bare-chested men and the sometimes bathing-capped women reinforce the dance’s swimming or water connection. Riding on the music’s pulse and the dance’s momentum, they occasionally scoot in and out as if jogging, backwards as often as forward. Taking inspiration from a musical range that goes from 12-tone innovator Anton Webern through Tango man Astor Piazzolla, Tharp’s dances curvet over the stage as if the dancers were schools of fish.
Notes courtesy of Twyla Tharp Productions. Used by permission.