On the Waterfront

Twyla Tharp Puts on a Show at Little Island

The amphitheater at Little Island.

Little Island, the pocket-sized park on the Hudson at 14th Street—a folly if ever there was one—has kicked off its summer offerings with a premiere by Twyla Tharp. The location is spectacular: a small amphitheater tucked into the hilly terrain of a park that hovers above the river, supported on champagne-glass-shaped pylons. An engineering feat that is a performance in itself. The amphitheater, with its semi-circle of tiered seating, faces out toward the waves, and the sunset. Even on a hot night, like the one on which I attended, there is a lovely breeze.

One can see why the organizers of the festival would want to invite Twyla Tharp, one of the few choreographers whose appeal crosses over into general American culture, to open the season. The amphitheater was full, and buzzing. But it quickly became clear that the Tharp of 2024 is a choreographer lost in her own daydreams, whose collage-like ideas emerge in clotted bursts, almost impossible for the audience to follow.

We know from a preview article in the New York Times that this new work, entitled “How Long Blues,” touches upon the writings of Albert Camus, and in particular his epidemic novel “La Peste,” as well as on the fact that Camus himself suffered from tuberculosis. And also on Camus’s love of soccer. One or two of the dancers, including the veteran Tharp performer John Selya, a stand-in for Camus in his trench coat, emit a cough here and there. A masked figure, like a giant voodoo doll, gambols through, suggesting the arrival of evil spirits. A soccer ball is passed around and at one point ends up in the Hudson (intentionally? unintentionally?). A second man, dressed in a suit and holding a pipe—the actor Michael Cerveris—is perhaps meant to represent Camus’s fellow Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Beyond this, one can’t make much sense of the goings-on, except to say that poor Camus, tormented by the other dancers, appears befuddled most of the time.

The soundtrack, in typical Tharp style, is a mix of songs and musical numbers, mostly drawn from the jazz canon: ragtime, the blues, vaudeville, and familiar songs like “My Way” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” (as well as, of course, “How Long Blues”). All arranged by T Bone Burnett and David Mansfield. The collage of music is produced by a combination of recordings and live performers, atop two towers. It is the highlight of the show. The singer Andromeda Turre is particularly good, with a glowing, warm, stylish sound that flows through the musical landscape like molten gold.

But, like the action on the dance floor, the music constantly flits from one idea to the next. Pace and editing are frenetic, verging on frantic, with dancers entering and leaving the stage, gesticulating, acting, reacting, and then rocketing off again. The audience is often left in the dark. What is going on?

One of the towers atop which the musicians performed.

Tharp’s movement style has long-since lost the cool, gliding feel it had in the seventies, replaced by a muscular, hard-edged virtuosity. The dancers spin, balance, kick their legs, or engage in swift passages of partnering. Glimpses of ballroom dance, which the choreographer has explored often in works like “Sinatra Suite”—whose phantom is present here—emerge, as Selya is paired with a series of women in sequined evening dresses. The partnering often has an aggressive edge; no one can accuse Tharp of having a sentimental attitude toward the relations between men and women. One of these men, Reed Tankersley, has a drunk solo, full of impressive dives and falls, a more forceful version of the drunk solo Tharp created for Baryshnikov in “Sinatra Suite.”

Which is not to say that the piece contains no sentiment at all. At one point, Cerveris breaks into a particularly solemn rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a song that lately has become a marker of emotional depth. Cue the tears! The moment, however, is counterbalanced by others in which bobble-headed figures saunter on, inexplicably, and dance to the music. (Designs by Santo Loquasto.) What they are meant to signify I cannot say.

The whirling dancers. Photo by Nina Westervelt.

Nor is it clear why, toward the end of “How Long Blues,” the dancers break into a meditative passage of spinning. Like dervishes, dressed in white, they spin with one arm up and one down, their robes billowing around them. A zebra-ed light (lighting by Justin Townsend) washes over them. Lovely to look at, particularly when seen against the backdrop of ships sailing past, lights twinkling.

If “How Long Blues” is an incomprehensible jumble, one can’t fault the dancers, who are indefatigable. Tharp gets everything out of them. My eye kept returning to Daisy Jacobson, whose intensity, clarity, and sense of humor were like a beacon. (To me, she became a stand-in for Tharp.) Also, Hugo Pizano Orozco, whose lithe finesse managed to create the illusion of calm amid the frenzy of steps.

Tharp energizes dancers, of that there is no doubt. During the performance, she sat in the audience, eagle eyes fixed on the stage, practically willing the dancers to move, placing herself in their midst. The intensity of Tharp’s creative impulse is white hot. It is the desire to turn that impulse into ideas that can be understood and enjoyed by others that is missing.

After the show: the cast of “How Long Blues.” John Selya, Andromeda Turre, and Michael Cerveris are in the front