This grand, swirling and elegant affair is a 5-movement ballet of major
proportions, employing the biggest cast of any Tharp ballet in her canon so
far. For all its amassing of number and force, and the enormous effects it
manages to create, it has aptly been commended as seeming both "enormous"
and "weightless." Its premise is notably dramatic: a tour de force for solo
violin rendered in a stageful of indelible movement. (Earlier in Tharp's
career this austere yet deep musical composition inspired her to work out
the ballet-cum-modernist inventions that led to the daring solo dancing of
the "Baryshnikov" lead in Push Comes To Shove [see same].) The scale of the
ballet's theatrics is consistently grand though variously displayed by one
or all of the three ballerinas and/or their respective male partners, as
well as by individual and/or couple dancing from a secondary tier of soloist
dancers (seven couples' worth). Additionally, there is the "surprise"
inclusion of an ensemble of sixteen women. The ballet's musical forms are
Bach's, the Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, and Chaconne,
respectively. Each of the three lead couples dominates one of the partita's
movements, in every case framed and complemented by a group of secondary
couples. The first, second and fourth movements showcase one lead couple
each. The third movement is led by all of the leading couples. The
climactic, final movement, the partita's traditional, bring-'em-all-back
"Chaconne," showcases the full, familiar cast plus the addition of the
16-woman ensemble, who essentially swirl through like a floating force of
nature. For all the choreography's decorousness and tenderness, with
attentive men supporting authoritative women, the work's extra-theatrical
power and surprises spring from the piquant strokes of legwork and
footwork--the use of pointework is pervasive and pronounced--and from the
way these Tharpian accents reveal the particular character of musical
strokes made by the violinist's bowing. A brisk battement here and a pliant
sinking into demi-pli? there enunciate for the eye what the ear is sensing
over and over, in myriad ways.