Sweet Fields™

Music

18th- and 19th-century American hymns by William Billings, William Walker, Abraham Wood, and Jeremiah Ingalls

Choreography

Twyla Tharp © Twyla Tharp

Staging

Matt Rivera (2023)
Shelley Washington (2023)
Alexander Brady (2022)
Rika Okamoto (2022)

Original Costume Design

Norma Kamali

Lighting Design

Jennifer Tipton

Duration

19 minutes

Cast

12 dancers

Premiere

September 20, 1996
Tharp!

PNB Premiere

June 3, 2022

Made for an ensemble of Tharp’s own dancers, Sweet Fields™ is dressed in Norma Kamali’s all-white “delicates,” at once casual and crisp. Pythagorean geometry and its related harmony and restraint inspired Tharp all through Sweet Fields™: Geometry as a key to Godliness. Simple, distinct patterns keep recurring, as basic geometric material evolves while one theme grows out of another. These themes, which get rendered in half- and double-time recurrences, include diagonals, spirals, straight lines, and circles. Five of its six men, lead off the 10-part “score” of 18th– and 19th– century American religious hymns. The suite’s five women perform the second hymn, and so on, the danced numbers go, mostly keeping the men and women “congregants” separated. Their striding gaits and their shuffling and loping paces make physical the plainsong music of the hymns. The vocabulary of details hews to the direct and the elemental in movement and posture, with simply flexed feet overriding a tendency toward prettily pointed toes. The geometric floor patterns and designs remain clear and crisply defined. Canonic, counterpoint, and 3-part counterpointed moves animate the geometry. Simple diagonals evolve as linked lines forming chevrons. The shaking of the women’s hands responds directly to “Shaker” community articulations associated with the specifically “Shaker Hymns” included in the musical mix. “Chesterfield” involves all the men, including a sixth, and takes the form of an austere funeral cortege. Its passage from one side of the stage to the other involves the carrying and lifting of an inert man, who, by way of musically timed moves and/or sudden rearrangements, changes from being one dancer to being another. For “Jordan,” the hymn that invokes the title’s “sweet fields,” the men and women intermingle but don’t meld for long. “Brevity,” which follows, showcases a lone male dancer, in an physically athletic, yet dramatically private moment. Some the dancer-to-dancer interactions involve softly pummeling hand moves that appear to hammer at the music as they represent the healing gestures that are part of such Shaker religious activities. The final two songs—“New Jerusalem” and “Northfield”—both date from 1804 and are from the “Sacred Harp” tradition, which involved the use of an idiosyncratic system of charming pitch-indication pictograms instead of standard, traditional stemmed and flagged notes. Here the 3-part counterpointed moves become prominent. The dance paces, pictures, and gestures work toward a similarly sophisticated simplicity. The pervasive discipline and playful rigors of the choreography overall, could not, in Tharp’s own words have been possible without her own Quaker origins.

Notes courtesy of Twyla Tharp Productions. Used by permission.

Artist Biographies

Twyla Tharp

Since her graduation from Barnard College in 1963, Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred twenty-five dances, five Hollywood movies, directed and choreographed two Broadway shows, written two books and received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, seventeen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts and numerous grants including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1965 Ms. Tharp began the dance company Twyla Tharp Dance for which she made 80 pieces including Nine Sinatra Songs and In the Upper Room. In 1988 Twyla Tharp Dance merged with American Ballet Theatre where Ms. Tharp created more than a dozen works. Since that time Ms. Tharp has choreographed dances for many companies including: The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance and The Martha Graham Dance Company.

In 1991 Ms. Tharp regrouped her company Twyla Tharp Dance and created a program with Mikhail Baryshnikov called Cutting Up, which went on to become one of contemporary dance’s most successful tours, appearing in twenty eight cities over a two month period. Since 1999 Twyla Tharp Dance and has been touring internationally to critical acclaim.

Ms. Tharp’s work first went to Broadway in 1980 with When We Were Very Young, followed in 1981 by her collaboration with David Byrne on The Catherine Wheel at the Winter Garden; and her 1985 staging of Singin’ in the Rain, which played at the Gershwin for three hundred sixty seven performances, followed by an extensive national tour. In 2002, Ms. Tharp and Billy Joel’s award-winning dance musical Movin’ Out premiered on Broadway, and a national tour opened in January 2004. Both companies are still playing. The recipient of a 2003 Tony Award for Movin’ Out, Ms. Tharp was also honored with the 2003 Astaire Award; the Drama League Award for Sustained Achievement in Musical Theater; and both the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Choreography.

In film Ms. Tharp has collaborated with director Milos Forman on Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980), and Amadeus (1984); with Taylor Hackford on White Nights (1985); and with James Brooks on I’ll Do Anything (1994).

Her television credits include choreographing Sue’s Leg for the inaugural episode of PBS’ Dance in America, co-producing and directing Making Television Dance, which won the Chicago International Film Festival Award; and directing The Catherine Wheel for BBC Television. Ms. Tharp co-directed the television special Baryshnikov by Tharp, which won two Emmy Awards as well as the Director’s Guild of America Award for Outstanding Director Achievement.

Ms. Tharp wrote her first book in 1992, her autobiography Push Comes to Shove. Her second book, The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life was published in October 2003.

Ms. Tharp continues to create works and lecture around the world.

Source: https://www.twylatharp.org/