In Tharp's career history, this dance for twelve individual dancers
(initially presented as six mated couples) contrasts sharply, in its
serenity and simplicity, with the extravagance and free-for-all form that
distinguishes the dances she had then previously made for the 1978 film
Hair. (In face some of the movement motifs and inventions for the
subsequent, serene work include "Out-takes" from Hair itself.) Baker's Dozen
takes its audiences, by way of its satiny smooth jazz music, to a "palm
court" space where afternoon social dancing happens with utter ease and
inevitability, touched throughout by gentle physical eccentricities, dancers
clambering up on other dancers, dancers held upside-down or other
"indecorous" positions. Dressed in smoothly shaped, silky cream
clothes--based on afternoon dresses for the women and semi-formals for the
men--the dancers slip into and out of view in an ever-evolving combination
of numbers. Tharp has likened her chosen groupings to "an ancient game of
jacks": four trios, three quartets, two sextets. Eventually a harmonious and
communal twelvesome emerges, all by way of bringing into prominence, one
after another, each of the twelve dancers soloing apart from the
eleven-dancer fold. In its romantically inclined couplings, its wittily
eccentric partnerings, and its finely calibrated unison work, the satiny
smooth dance aims to conjure world of living social graces and personal
rapport. Since its beginnings, the dance has held the public's attention as
a special Tharp classic, mixing nostalgic and contemporary emotions all
together.