Created in 1975, and expanded in 1980 to its present form, the seven-part
suite (to Chuck Berry Goldies from the beat/street youth of the Fifties),
Ocean's Motion presents a sassy, nearly smartalecky fivesome backed up by a
somewhat less prominent quintet. The two quintets of dancers is dressed in
very Fifties shades of bubble-gum pinks and gun-metal grays. In Santo
Loquasto's classy and chic renderings of street-gang duds, the dancers,
sometimes bubble-gum popping (on the music, of course) manage, by way of
carefully calibrated unison and unisonlike dancing, both to soothe and stir
up an audience?s interest. (Tharp has described the dance as a savvy program
opener.) The deftly sharp, sly and slippery shenanigans show off a
gratifyingly artful order while they render a scene of self-confident,
devil-may-care youth, full of "attitude" before the buzzword was codified.
The closing "Almost Grown" (recapping the opening "Almost Group") wraps up
the whole smoothly paced affair in a gratifying climax that brings everyone
back into the smooth and smiling mix. Structurally, the climactic dance
makes its impact as a double quintet, with the prominent and less prominent
fivesomes working in mirror and canonic recapitulations of the moves from
the dance's opening section.