Twyla Tharp’s “Bach Duet” is just six minutes long. For the Gibney Company’s revival of this work as part of program at the Joyce Theater this week, five musicians accompany it, then call it quits for the night.
Such extravagance is the mark of a well-funded organization. But it’s Tharp’s choice that’s more important: a sign of good taste from a troupe that often lacks it. This Gibney program, which also includes a second Tharp dance and a world premiere by Jermaine Spivey and Spenser Theberge, is an improvement over recent ones, a step in the right direction.
The “Bach Duet”, composed in 1974 and not performed since the mid-70s, is in Bach’s 78th Cantata, “Jesu, der du meine Seele”. Jake Tribus and Miriam Gittens stand side by side, dressed in tennis whites. The dance begins when Tribus pretends to spit on the floor and rubs on the spit with his foot.
This irreverent gesture is a dancer’s joke. It is a method of increasing grip, which these dancers will need. Tharp’s dense choreography sends them each way, independently but occasionally crossing or pulling or bumping into each other. The spit move is back, at different angles, along with double takes and smarts.
Tribus and Gittens dance with skill and elegance, but they don’t sell their eye-rolling jokes so much that they barely register. They nail the steps, but not the spirit — a common problem with this repertory company when it reaches the past.
That’s less true of his arrangement of “The Fugue,” a classic Tharp piece from 1970. Inspired by Bach, it’s performed without music by three dancers working 20 variations on a 20-measure theme. What makes it classic Tharp is the intricately arranged composition clothed in frivolity.
For dancers, it’s boring: taxing the mind with twists and turns, stretches and compressions with the half and double. Graham Feeny, Eddieomar Gonzales-Castillo and Eleni Loving do the difficult timing, suddenly turning from counterpoint to synchronicity. They also manage the changes in dynamics: between hard feet and soft with a damper pedal. between business efficiency and floating, arching grace.
The program’s other two selections aren’t up to par, but the dancers seem to be taking lessons from Tharp into them. Yue Yin’s “A Measurable Existence” (2022) is another duet. It’s a meeting. Tribus and Jesse Obremski start side by side. then they interact and influence each other. At the end, when Tribus realizes Obremski is gone, there is a sense of loss.
The play isn’t helped by Rutger Zuydervelt’s synth score or Asami Morita’s relentless lighting, but the choreography has an elastic quality, a freehand finesse and the tumbling, circular momentum of martial arts. The collaboration is full of beauty, and Tribus and Obremski imbue it with a malleable sensibility.
“Remains,” Spivey and Theberge’s debut, is a semi-improvisational work for the full nine-piece ensemble. The dancers periodically call out numbers, which seem to signal certain activities. Synthetically, this is closer to Trisha Brown’s 1970s experiments than Tharp’s. so is the interjection of strong speech, sentences full of omissions like “I always wanted to be…”
The conceit is a bit of a gimmick, albeit a well-executed one. Speech can be jarring, as when movements are perceived vocally with stuttering. But there is also some wit, as in a duet accompanied by what sounds like overlapping inner monologues.
The gambit works in the sense that the dancers, doing their thing, look good. Loving is especially lovely in a long strumming solo at the back of the stage. In a repertory company, dancers can often appear to be trying on costumes that don’t fit them. In “Remains”, they look like themselves.
Gibney dance
Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan. joyce.org.