"Ballare" is an Italian verb meaning "to dance" and/or to "bump up and
down; to vibrate." Tharp's ballet, with all of its four women on pointe, is
a continually evolving septet that starts out as symmetrical sextet. (At the
mid-way of the sonata's lyrical second movement, with an entrance both
matter-of-fact and subtle, Tharp brings on her third male dancer, deftly
shifting the established "relationships" of her Ballare cast.) With its
three men dressed in softly cut trousers and shirts, and its four women in
silky dresses with long, gathered, creamy skirts, the onrushing but not
hectic dance showcases its dancers variously and individually as quartets
trios and as duos. The women's skirts "dance" incidentally, when they fill
with air of spiralling turns or when they fan with the extension of a leg,
and they also "dance" more precisely when they are held and played with by
the pointedancing women. Tharp presents Mozart's classical and rococo sonata
in a twentieth century mirror. In its rhythmic clarity its shining moves pay
homage to a Balanchinean ethic. This element has been described by Tharp as
being evident in the breadth and openness of the women's torsos, in their
Balanchinelike open backs. Symmetry and asymmetry seamlessly tease each
other into and out of prominence. With its trio of gallant men, both
partnering and dancing about the quartet of women, this becomes alternately
a recognizable couple-dance and a panoply of solo dances. The men in good
part reveal their Mozartean airiness by means of recurrent and varied
mercurial jumps; the women, by way of fluid pointework that sets their
changeable, and filigree moves on the tiny base of toetips. By the end the
focus has shifted again, and one woman remains apart, newly prominent, as
three couples strike related, partnered poses.