Driving for an hour north on 75 toward Detroit, on a snowy Sunday afternoon, makes you wonder—is it really worth it? Accidents on the roads, aggressive drivers, unpredictable potholes (all familiar sights to everyone in the area), just to see a dance performance in a sleek environment that seemed to be (twi)light years away from the present weather conditions. (I want to imagine that Twyla Tharp would have loved this pun!) She was not present at the Detroit Opera Theatre on February 2, but her company was. Tharp’s choreographies feature often in Detroit’s productions, but, as I found out, this was only the second ever appearance of Twyla Tharp Dance in Detroit. Yes, the horrendous drive was totally worth it.

Tharp, a titan of American dance, is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee—60 years of Twyla Tharp Dance. While a milestone on its own, appropriately celebrated with an extensive tour from coast to coast, it was the program that attracted this currently ballet-obsessed musicologist: the revival of her 1998 ballet Diabelli. Simply put, and setting aside lore, myths, and misconceptions, Ludwig van Beethoven created a set of 33 variations on a rather mundane waltz theme given to him by publisher and composer Anton Diabelli. The Diabelli Variations (1819-23) constitute Beethoven’s last word and testament on that musical form—just like his late string quartets, late piano sonatas, Ninth Symphony, and the Missa solemnis constitute the summa of each of their respective genres. Beethoven managed to push every genre to its limits, and thus changed it forever.

Turning Beethoven’s music into ballet had been an endeavor that only few choreographer had undertaken by that time; but the selection of one of piano literature’s most iconic, titanic works, was definitely unique. Undoubtedly, the challenges of choreographing Beethoven’s music multiply when it comes to this work. It is not only the complex, unpredictable and esoteric nature of the composer’s (especially) late works. In Tharp’s rendition, this hour-long score is performed live, with the pianist providing an “accompaniment” to the dancers’ movements. The incredible Vladimir Rumyantsev played from the theater’s pit and, although unseen by the majority of the audience, he must have felt as exposed as if he had occupied center stage. The demanding score seemed to simply flow through his fingers and I, at least, was spared the common impulse to concentrate on the interpretation of the music; instead I was absorbed by Tharp’s choreographic translation of the score. Thank you, Mr. Rumyantsev.

Tharp seemed intent to honor the fragmentary nature of the Variations. Her work is comprised of 33 vignettes, each with its own style, expression, and mood. The 11 dancers onstage jump, shuffle, linger, bend, lift, clap, in a virtual miscellany of technical and stylistic modalities. After the first couple of variations the audience seemed to be relieved that they did not have to concentrate on the dance for a full, uninterrupted hour. The reaction after almost every variation proved it: the audience laughed, gasped, or applauded as a response to each choreographic fragment, with no apparent regard for the sum of the work. Nothing is intrinsically wrong with it—the audience seemed attentive and entertained. Success!

I wonder, though, if this dislocated presentation of the Variations onstage exposed the underbelly of dealing with Beethoven’s thorny score. As we found out during the always informative pre-dance talks at the Detroit Opera, it was the legendary pianist Alfred Brendel who suggested to Tharp that she choreograph Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Alexander Brady, former dancer and currently artistic associate with Twyla Tharp Dance, made this comment in passing. But, after the performance, it reverberated strongly with what I had experienced. Brendel is not only of the most prominent pianists who have successfully climbed what is rightfully considered to be the mount Everest of piano music, but he has also written about the score with acute intelligence. Right from the start of his essay, he informs us that the Diabelli Variations “reveal themselves to be a humorous work in the widest possible sense” (113). In our culturally disjointed moment, such a statement may sound outrageous: “there is nothing funny about the Diabelli Variations,” I hear someone say—and rightly so. Brendel did not have in mind foolishness, comedy, and folly, simply because humor was not the same as levity in Beethoven’s time. Humor is “the sublime in reverse” (das umgekehrte Erhabene), as famously quipped in 1804 by Jean Paul and properly evoked by Brendel. In his magisterial analysis, Brendel invites us to comprehend this music within the philosophical and cultural prerogatives of the time, whereby humor “relates to the dark undercurrent of life, and prevails over it” (109).

For all its sharpness and perspicacity, allusiveness and gratification, Tharp’s Diabelli does not go there; for the most part, barring few exceptions, the work stays at the level of late 20th-century humor. It is not a coincidence that the “funniest” gestures and choreographic events onstage elicited the most audience reaction. Our present culture is frustratingly prone to laughter, and it’s almost a relief to know that the work you are watching is giving you permission to laugh—no derision in return. I found myself feeling relief “in reverse,” à la Jean Paul. I was thankful that Tharp’s choreography occasionally went against, even opposed, the music’s more profound, weighty utterances. Under different circumstances I would have interpreted it as the choreographer’s desire to be ironic, to show you in movement something contrary to what the music is telling you. Not in this case, though. I felt relief because now, I can go back to listening to Beethoven’s work again, in all its glorious eccentricity, unopposed by any remaining visuals, still seeking new ways in which to mesh its resonant Jean-Paulian humor with life’s rumbling darkness.

And there is a lot of darkness to go around these days. The second dance on the program was a new work titled SLACKTIDE (2025), for which Tharp went back to Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia. Performed live in an arrangement by Third Coast Percussion, it was a moody, almost brooding piece, visually and aurally captivating, that arguably reflected “on the crisis of climate change.” I felt grateful for Tharp’s indefatigable energy at 83, but also for the institutions that supported the creation of this new work: the New York City Center, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and UC Santa Barbara. Just weeks after this undeniably not-to-be-missed performance, I am left wondering whether creating, performing and even actively watching a work like SLACKTIDE is not an act of resistance that we desperately need when darkness has started to spread over our artistic institutions. The tour of Twyla Tharp Dance has planned stops at the New York City Center (March 12-16, 2025), and at The Kennedy Center (March 26-29, 2026). Advertising the remaining performances was not how I planned to end this blog entry after I made it back home on that cold Sunday evening. But it is the only fitting ending now, after February 12. Do not miss this performance—resist.

References

Alfred Brendel On Music: Collected Essays (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2001).

Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter), Vorschule der Ästhetik, ed. Josef Müller (Leipzig, 1923), 1.7.32 (p. 125). https://archive.org/details/jean-paul-vorschule-der-asthetik-nebst-1/mode/2up