THE GOLDEN SECTION

In 1981, Twyla Tharp premiered "The Catherine Wheel" on broadway alongside a score by her then boyfriend David Byrne. It was the second in a series of broadway productions for Twyla as she expanded and relaxed into this newfound form of crossover ballet. Composed of 17 sections and 15 dancers, it was an evening length collage wherein she could work in disparate metaphor, creating a vast piece that nonetheless would always come back to the central motif of a catherine wheel, "a spinning firework, a crochet pattern, a flower" (Program Notes Tharp, Twyla 1981). The final part of "The Catherine Wheel", "The Golden Section" is the longest of any section at 15 minutes and makes use of the whole company whereas prior sections were composed of smaller groups. Another differentiating factor of "The Golden Section" is its total absence of narrative. The rest of "The Catherine Wheel" centers around 8 cast members who represent a family, yet in "The Golden Section" they're part of the undifferentiated ensemble. The length and differentiation from the rest of the production has allowed "The Golden Section" to be staged as a standalone piece in companies like The Alvin Ailey Company, the Miami City Ballet, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. The production of "The Golden Section" that I drew most of my inspiration from is the one availiable on the Renee Wadleigh Library. I was deliberating on whether or not to link to the Alvin Ailey version of it but, to be frank, I think they missed the quality that made it so alluring. The video you're about to see is a televised version of the piece, done by the Miami City Ballet: "The Golden Section"

Described to as an "abstract arena of pure energy", "The Golden Section" gives the impression of a piece that lacks technique entirely. Dancers cut in, out, and through the stage with brief phrases which combine ballet technique with the sort of pedestrian swagger explored in "Push Comes to Shove" with Baryshnikov in 1976. The Port de Bras of ballet are arrived at almost by accident as dancers swing their arms over and around to push their momentum into the next movement. Dancers are almost never *not* in plié as it provides the greatest convenience for constant movement. After viewing the piece around sixteen times, I think the longest pause I witnessed was only around a single second. The best way to describe the trajectory of the piece is that it is in constant rotation, its like the dancers are in a wave pool caught up in various swirls and eddies. They do not drive themselves, they are simply along for the ride. If this description gives the impression that the dancers appear to be out of control, that is not the intention. They instead appear as though this is how they've danced their whole life, fishes schooling and breaking apart seamlessly. Twyla's choreography is of course multifactorial in its influences, but its truly incredible how much it appears its own. Hence people having a hard time describing her work as anyting but "Quintessentially Twyla".

Regarding the more formal structure of the piece, nearly everything is performed in solos or small groups; duos, trios, quintets, only occasionally does the full cast appear on stage. Unfortunately, I have only one body at my disposal. More fortunately, the dancing that occurs within these duos and trios is prased as individual solos. For this creative response, I theorized that I could capture the same quality of constant movement and dancing in eddies if I combined many of the phrases from the male solos into ensembles. If I could layer myself multiple times, could I capture what Twyla was getting at? My Creative Response, "Golden Section(s)" is linked Here!