A Touch of Tharp

He ambles in to the rinky-tink beat of Joseph Lamb's rag, Bohemia, a little guy in a shiny satin shirt and crushed-velvet breeches. Mikhail Baryshnikov, loose of limb with plenty of shoulder action, adjusts his bowler hat. From the wings a woman's leg appears, and then the rest of Marianna Tcherkassky. The two link up, meet Martine van Hamel, and ease downstage in a vaudeville shuffle. Stop. Resume action, triple speed.

Tcherkassky spins mad circles on the tips of her toes. Van Hamel lunges through the air, landing with a shimmy and a smirk.

Splat Falls. Push Comes to Shove is the name of the ballet; its inventor is Choreographer Twyla Tharp. Last week it was unveiled by the American Ballet Theater at Manhattan's Uris Theater, and it just might be the most important event of the dance year. With cinematic speed, the cast of characters tumbles around the stage to the sounds of Haydn's 82nd Symphony. Isn't that Buster Keaton? There's Joe Namath and a courtful of jokers, heroes and heroines all. Linked by sheer velocity, the steps merge in combinations that are silly and daring. Brises follow splat falls; dreamy waltzes erupt in staccato spasms of movement. With deadpan wit, 16 girls perform precise glisses while their heads wobble like windup dolls. All at once 30 dancers are onstage, twisting, wiggling, milling about in all directions. It is a Hollywood climax in the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille, but the heart and humor of it belong to the choreographer.

Tharp has already been called a number of things: the Busby Berkeley of the '70s, a modern Nijinska, a female Balanchine. She has also been put down as modish, cute, instantly disposable--a Bette Midler of dance. "I just don't think ballet is as narrow as many people do," says Tharp. An unabashed eclectic, she does not hesitate to combine a Las Vegas chorine's high kick--or a baseball pitcher's windup--with a classic ballet pas. The result eludes stylistic categorizing, yet remains instantly recognizable as Tharp choreography.

Her characteristic swivels and slides may look improvised, but Tharp's dances are planned down to the final blink. At rehearsals she snapped out commands: "Soft elbows, make sure you lift your skirts, ladies, watch your eleves," or "That retard should last forever, Marianna--you have a full second." In Tharp time, a second is an eternity. Her dancers are given a lot to do in the space of a beat. In one seemingly continuous motion, swaying hips slink into wiggles that burst into furious pirouettes, then stop on a dime and reverse directions. It is as if Tharp worked to encapsulate all of movement in one lightning-speed action. Audiences are dazzled, dancers left breathless.

Even the swift, strong Baryshnikov at first felt pushed by the pace of Tharp's choreography. "Misha learned something about dancing fast," says Tharp.

One of the hardest things for him, however, was the vaudeville soft-shoe movement. Says Tharp: "It's not virtuoso dancing--all you do is handle a hat. You simply imply that you dance so well that you dare the audience to watch you. It requires a Gary Grant refinement."

Twyla Tharp has been seriously watching movies starting from the tune that she worked as a carhop in drive-in theaters owned by her parents. A native of Indiana, she was named after a Midwestern pig-calling contestant known as Twila. "My mother thought Twyla would look good on a theater marquee," explains Tharp. Her ambitious mother also laid out a marathon course of piano, violin, viola, drum, baton-twirling, ballet and tap-dancing lessons that occupied Tharp's childhood. It all paid off.

God's Work. She enrolled at Barnard College, majoring in art history. Between classes she danced at the studios of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. Just before graduating, she joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company, but left in 1965 to form her own ensemble, a trio of women. Their first performances were in the basement gymnasium of a church. "We were a very aggressive bunch of broads doing God's work," she recalls. "Bit by bit we felt it was O.K. for audiences to enjoy us." In 1970 a man was added to the troupe, which was gaining a reputation in the avant-garde of dance. Impatient with foundation questionnaires, Tharp's replies were typically blunt: "I'm sorry, I write dances, not application forms. Send me the money. Love, Twyla."

In 1973 the City Center Jeffrey Ballet invited Tharp to put on Deuce Coupe, a freestyle piece matching up pas de bourrees and the boogaloo to the sun-and-surf music of the Beach Boys.

Quirky, neon-bright and very American in its images of cars, teen-agers and spray-can art, Deuce Coupe was unlike anything ever seen by uptown ballet audiences.

These days Twyla is very well supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and private contributors. She plans to continue exploring the boundaries of dance. "In every good work of art there is a huge story, whether it is a Matisse cutout at the end of his life or a portrait at the beginning. The story has to do with guts and vitality." In a way, of course, that defines Tharp's art as well as her life.

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