Twyla Tharp returning to New York City Center with 2 favorite dance programs
NEW YORK - Legendary dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp's work is often described as innovative.
The 81-year-old is still very active.
She's back with two favorite dance programs at New York City Center next week.
CBS2's Dave Carlin talked with Tharp, and went behind the scenes to a rehearsal room where the dancer-athletes train for a long-awaited return to New York City Center, led by Tharp.
"If a dancer is a wondrous person, I'll take them. I've never been one to say 'Oh, this looks like a dancer.' I've been one to feel this is a dancer, and that's why I cast the way I do," Tharp said.
She is revisiting some her greatest work from a staggeringly successful career in dance, film, Broadway and books.
The upcoming show feature "In The Upper Room," music by Phillip glass, and "Nine Sinatra Songs."
The dancers are all stars giving it everything they've got, and the two programs they are performing are known in the dance world as "closers" - usually rousing finales.
"When you put on 'In The Upper Room' first, which is a survivor piece, and then you go to 'Nine Sinatra Songs,' which is a piece that deals with how people connecting to one another can find a future," Tharp said.
Tharp says she is about new work and doesn't like looking back, but Carlin took her down memory lane about moments that made dance history in the 1970s and 1980s, when she famously partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He talked to Carlin about it late last month.
"She's fabulous... she was one of the first modern choreographers I worked with," Baryshnikov said. "It was challenging choreography."
"I'm glad he remembers me fondly," Tharp said. "He didn't speak English. I didn't speak Russian. So we're both cursing in different languages."
"You are a shining example of someone who stays vital," Carlin said.
"I worked a lot during the pandemic. I did probably more projects than I would ordinarily, just to be sure I was still working," Tharp said.
She says working is sustenance, and dance gets her through the day, her way.