DANCE REVIEW
WAGNER called it “the apotheosis of the dance.” A century ago Isadora Duncan performed a solo to it. Nearly 40 years later the Russian choreographer Leonide Massine used it as the basis for a ballet depicting the Creation of the World.
Funnily enough, that doesn’t actually mean that Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is actually very danceable — as Twyla Tharp eloquently demonstrated with the world premiere of her sad little ballet called “The Beethoven Seventh,” which had its world premiere Saturday night with New York City Ballet at the New York State Theater.
This was Tharp’s first solo work for City Ballet — many years ago she collaborated with Jerome Robbins on a ballet for the company — and her choice of music was as ambitious as it was ill-advised.
The sheer vitality of Beethoven’s music and the essentially organic nature of its structure, makes it a quicksand for choreography — dancers look puny and rather stupid against its massive statements.
Tharp’s method shows a marked similarity to the style she successfully adopted for Haydn’s 82nd Symphony (“The Bear”) in her cheerfully wonderful “Push Comes to Shove.” But what works with Papa Haydn does not cut the same ice with Beethoven.
In the earlier piece she juxtaposed a very free structure with classic steps, many of them given an individual twist or quirk — a method carried through to the Haydn that had already been set up by the jazz-prologue set to a Joseph Lamb rag.
Here in “The Seventh Symphony” the same ideas look crazy and presumptuous, while some of the jazzily bizarre movements, gestures, squiggles, doodles and tics suggest outtakes from Disney’s “Fantasia.”
That said, Tharp’s principal dancers, Jenifer Ringer, a dazzling Peter Boal (looking his best for some seasons), Wendy Whelan, Nikolaj Hubbe, Miranda Weese, and a very slight off-form Damian Woetzel, all did wonders, as did the soloist ensemble, even though, all through the ballet, the men looked better than the women.
New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, 65th Street at Columbus Avenue; (212) 870-5570. Season runs through Feb. 27.