Twyla Tharp Dance at Wharton Center for Performing Arts

Fiftieth Anniversary. John Zorn provides the show’s vibrant introductory Fanfare, followed by Preludes and Fugues. Radiating with Tharp’s generous spirit and humanity, the dance is set to J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The wild and raucous humor that Tharp locates in the jazz of Steve Bernstein and MSU alumnus Henry Butler runs rampant through Yowzie, the second new dance. With their immaculate technique and joy, her fierce band of dancers brings the choreography to life. In each premiere, Tharp turns her decades of experience – dances for Hollywood films, television, and the Broadway stage, ballets, modern dances – into living proof that time is her partner as she continues to deepen and expand the singular imagination which makes her one of the century’s most treasured artists.