If Frank Sinatra had really done it his way, he probably would have been a dancer. At least that’s what he told choreographer Twyla Tharp.
A modern-dance legend who often has been inspired by American pop music, Tharp is in Atlanta for the world premiere of her newest work: “Come Fly With Me,” set to the songs of Old Blue Eyes. The show begins previews Wednesday at the Alliance Theatre, and if it elicits the sort of interest that Tharp’s Billy Joel tribute “Movin’ Out” did, there’s talk that it could move to Broadway.
As the creator of more than 130 dances, Tharp has also delved into classical music, choreographing pieces to Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart. But the 68-year-old Mac-Arthur Foundation “genius grant” winner and student of Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor never had a chance to chat up the old masters.
The Chairman of the Board was another story, however.
“Yes, we went to dinner a couple of times,” Tharp said as she sat in a quiet nook of the Four Seasons hotel on a recent afternoon, dipping biscotti into a cup of coffee.
It seems Sinatra was a big fan and particularly pleased that she used his recordings for dances she created in the ’70s and ’80s, including duets she created for Mikhail Baryshnikov.
“He loved the piece,” she said of 1984’s “Sinatra Suite,” which showcased Baryshnikov in a series of duets and a final solo. “He always said that when he sat in the audience and watched it, that it made him cry because he’d never seen his songs danced to. He always wanted, he said, to be a dancer. He was a boxer. He was very, very physical. ... He said he would have rather been a dancer than a singer.”
Indiana-born Tharp grew up in California, where her parents ran a drive-in picture show. She was weaned on Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Sinatra was her mom’s music; “Heartbreak Hotel” was hers.
For a period after establishing Twyla Tharpe Dance in 1965, the choreographer didn’t use music in her abstract experimental configurations. So when her interests turned to upbeat jazz and swing, ballroom and rock, her audience breathed a sigh of relief, she said, joking.
In 2002, Tharp took the tunes of piano man Joel to Broadway. Fusing the jukebox musical form with an evening-length ballet, “Movin’ Out” was a searing account of the cycle of addiction and romantic dysfunction that typified the lost generation of Vietnam. “Movin’ Out” won Tharp a Tony Award for choreography, became a touring sensation and created the template for her 2006 Broadway follow-up: “The Times They Are a-Chang-in’ ” — a poorly received homage to the work of Bob Dylan.
Now it’s Sinatra’s turn.
“This is really unique that Atlanta is hosting a world premiere imagined and created by Twyla Tharp,” said John McFall, the Atlanta Ballet’s artistic director.
Backed by a team of New York producers in collaboration with the Alliance, “Come Fly With Me” is slated to begin a North American tour next summer and could eventually tour internationally.
“Anything is possible,” Tharp said mysteriously.
An intense, owlish-looking woman with severe gray hair and glasses, Tharp is a known for her discipline, perfectionism, rigor and crusty demeanor.
“With Twyla, you just have to get out of her way,” said Nicholas Howey, the New York-based lead producer of “Come Fly With Me.” “She’s a one-woman show, and that’s a good thing.”
On the day of the interview, Tharp seemed in a good mood — rarely cracking a smile but eager to talk about her love of literature. (Balzac is her favorite. Tolstoy is the master. But first things first: She wanted to know whether Flannery O’Connor’s peacocks are still at the Georgia writer’s farm near Milledgeville.)
If you want to discuss her work, you have to pull it out of her. Dance is where she lives, an energy plucked from the soul, transformed by craft into liquid grace. Love is her preferred topic, and the American songbook is “a folk heritage of America in relation to how our culture has loved at love.”
“Come Fly With Me” is her fourth Sinatra tribute, and there’s a reason she keeps coming back to his music.
“When he’s singing these songs, they are not really pop songs. He is doing them as arias. He’s seeing himself as an actor. And the emotion he generates through these songs is much more to the point of why he’s so popular than the lyrics themselves. It’s how he sings the lyrics.”
Her so-called “epic revisitation” of the Sinatra catalog focuses on the romantic partnerings of four couples at a club: who they come in with and who they leave with. It features more than 20 Sinatra songs, 15 dancers, a 17-member orchestra and jazz vocalist Dee Daniels.
Howey, who produced the “Movin’ Out” tours, said Tharp approached him with the Sinatra project a couple of years ago and he decided it was a “no-brainer.”
The Sinatra family has endorsed the project and contributed newly discovered vocals from its archive. On the playlist are such definite Sinatra tunes as “Witchcraft,” “My Way” and “Let’s Fall in Love.”
Tharp has brought back original “Movin’ Out” cast members Ashley Tuttle, Keith Roberts and John Selya, as well as Holley Farmer (a former lead dancer with Cunningham) and Rika Okamoto (the last dancer picked by Tharp mentor Graham to star in Graham’s company).
The choreographer says her new exploration of love and relationships will end happily.
“I only do happy endings,” she said with characteristic flatness. “I’m an optimist. I get bashed for it a lot.”
“For me, one of the ingredients of dance that we can offer to an audience is to have them leave the theater feeling better than when they came in. And we can do this not just because of some of the extraordinary dancers ... but also because you will literally absorb energy from the performers into yourself. I would rather send people out feeling better about themselves than not feeling better about themselves.”
Theater preview
“Come Fly With Me”
Previews: Wednesday-Sept. 22. Opening night: Sept. 23. Through Oct. 11. $25-$60. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
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