“This piece is probably terrifying you,” says Twyla Tharp in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “But that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Feet and hands come in for a disproportionate amount of Tharp’s attention. She starts by asking what the key word is for the arms in The Fugue. Relaxation? one dancer hazards. No, she says, that’s an illusion. “It’s honesty,” she nearly shouts, “truth for the arms!” After the arms, hands. “The hands can’t be dead,” she says. “The eye can’t go to the hands because they’re dead.” But the life in the hands can’t be self-conscious, either. And the all-important feet: “Inside your heavy shoes, I have to feel your toes. Your toes should have like suction cups at the end.”
“Lies,” she says smiling. “That’s what makes good theater, lies.”
The exceptions to the “one count, one step” rule are counts five and six: on five, the left leg is raised; on six, it’s suspended and moving through the air. It drops to the floor only on count seven. Counts five and six allow the rhythm to slow to half speed momentarily. And there’s an “and” between counts 12 and 13–a quick touch of the toe behind oneself–that allows for double time. The whole sequence can also be done on the other side, which simply means that left and right are reversed; in count two, for instance, you’d jump on the right foot and extend the left.
As the basic theme of The Fugue is made up of 20 counts, the dance itself is divided into 20 different sections; each of these is also called a fugue, and all together they take about l5 or 20 minutes to perform. The cast is three dancers, though any given fugue might use one, two, or three. Like a musical fugue, The Fugue uses its distinct “voices”–its three bodies–contrapuntally. When two or more dancers are onstage, at almost any given moment each will be doing something different from the others.
But to describe The Fugue technically does not do it justice. Against all reason it’s a pleasure to watch: without understanding the rules, a viewer knows they’re there and marvels at the dancers’ labor and concentration in carrying them out. The dance is richly human and richly formal, almost architectural. The scrapes and stamps and taps of the dancers’ feet–the women wear boots, the men heavy shoes–create the music; you can close your eyes and “see” the dance. But if you open them, the intercut sequences and contrapuntal voices together create a dense visual weave of contrasting movement.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The atmosphere at rehearsals, even without Tharp, is intense, the pace not rushed but relentless. In some ways, the Hubbard Street studios exacerbate the tension. Located on the third floor of an older building on South Wabash, they’re periodically filled with the sounds of construction and of the Evanston Express and Lake/Dan Ryan trains going by right outside the windows. Sometimes it’s easier to hear a conductor’s announcement to his passengers than to hear what Way and Wright are saying to the dancers. The classes in adjoining studios often impose some funky rock pulse on the performers, making even more difficult their struggle to fill silence with The Fugue’s tricky cadences. Conte’s big red dog, Buddy, wanders into the studio now and then with a neon green tennis ball in his grinning mouth. Bataille’s son, Isaac, and another dancer’s daughter, both about one and a half, toddle in for an occasional visit.
