ABT 85 - Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove

The following is a chapter from Twyla Tharp's book Push Comes to Shove:

Twyla Tharp Foundation

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Shortly after Sue's Leg, I met with Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith, co-directors of American Ballet Theatre, and their associate, Antony Tudor, in a very large, fairly intimidating, sumptuously appointed, and appropriately high-up corner office in a Chase Manhattan Bank building. Wasting no time, Miss Chase asked me to make a ballet for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, Martine van Hamel, the entire chorus and ensemble of the company ... and, oh, could I maybe find something for Fernando Bujones?

Equally quick, I said I would consider the offer, but if I agreed, my fee would be ten thousand dollars for a three-year exclusive license. Lucia gasped. "Young lady," she said, recovering her self-possession, "that is a great deal of money." No one in the ballet world set out to make money. Balanchine often gave his works away. Just who did I think I was?

Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Photo by Richard Avedon, 1976.

The two men tried covering their surprise at my audacity, Tudor in particular looking as though he had just swallowed a whole chicken with all its feathers. I explained that I supported myself and my son and that while I was honored by their invitation, I could not afford to work for less. Further, I would not commit until I had seen Baryshnikov in a rehearsal. I wanted to be sure he would be able to do new work. I had seen him perform Giselle already and had been properly impressed. Physically, he was adorable—a short, muscular, manly body, an innocent, worldly face; his dance technique was perfect, genuine, and dominating; his stage manner was admirable—he had generously and warmly stepped into the shadows when the spotlight was on his partner. But performing beautifully in the nineteenth-century ballets was one thing. I needed to judge for myself whether he could do anything else, physically and emotionally, and how willing he would be to put himself on the line. My cool response masked my real reaction. As Tudor probably guessed, I didn't really doubt Misha's artistic commitment or ABT's financial one. I already knew Misha himself had proposed the idea after seeing As Time Goes By, and the company was going to give him everything he wanted.

It was myself I doubted. Could I pull it off? Making a ballet for Mikhail Baryshnikov was a tall order. Yes, he guaranteed great exposure for the choreographer working with him. But notoriety can harm as well as help: if the work failed, the choreographer, not Misha, would be blamed because he was already an untouchable.

Since his defection in the summer of 1974, he had received enormous publicity, including the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week. The publicity, combined with his reputation as one of the century's premier—if not the greatest-dancers since Nijinsky, in addition to his profound sex appeal, made him a forbidding collaborator. Before the official announcement of my commission, I ran into Alvin Ailey. Alvin was larger than me in size, reputation as a choreographer, and experience. He just looked down at me and said with sardonic amazement, "Are you really going to do a ballet for Baryshnikov? You've got to be nuts. You'll be eaten alive.

Still, with the courage of the naive and the willfulness of the ambitious, I attended a rehearsal to see up close what all the hoopla was about. I came in a bit late, so there was no formal introduction. I crept around the edge of the space to my empty and waiting chair. Misha was rehearsing lifts with Gelsey Kirkland.

Gelsey was evidently unhappy with the lifts but Misha kept doing them the same way: I was apparently witnessing a standoff. Then suddenly, just after Gelsey had stopped the pianist with a soft wave of her hand to go back for maybe the fourteenth pass, Misha paused and, instead of following her to the upstage corner, turned a cartwheel and a somersault and landed at my feet—literally— arms outstretched somewhere around my knees. And such a grin. The one thing I had not expected from the great Russian ballet stylist of our time was acrobatics and clowning. But then, I didn't know Misha yet. "Take me," he was saying. "I promise I'll never become boring or predictable." Well, what was a girl to say?

[…]

Back in New York we began work on the new ballet. We rehearsed in the old ABT studios on West Sixty-first Street, an ingeniously designed space that included an overhead walkway, letting you view the action in four large studios below. I asked for the last studio, the fifth, because it was not accessible to the walkway: concentrating on new and foreign ways of moving, Misha didn't need the extra trouble of thirty little faces analyzing each move. Those who were hopelessly and desperately in love with the body and the image would have to wait for him at the downstairs door.

Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov in rehearsals for Push Comes to Shove.

Center photo by Richard Avedon, 1976.

Almost instantly, two things became very clear about Misha. One, he was unbelievably eager for new movement, trying anything I did with complete sincerity and heart. And two, his concentration span was practically nil. After two or three minutes he would phase out, his eyes glazing over; he would pace the room as though the walls were confining him, then turn and go up close to the mirror, looking into his own eyes as though he were suffering amnesia and searching for a way to recognize himself. Frowning, he seemed to be saying, "Where am I? Who am I?" My heart went out to his bravery and pain. As he wandered toward the mirror he would run his fingers through his thoroughly drenched hair—in mid-July, the room was a hotbox with the fans turned off for fear his muscles would cramp—drawing it back off his face, but also to touch him-self, "pinch" himself: "Am I really here?" Without language to distract him-earlier plans of learning Russian in two weeks had been abandoned after my first look into a beginner's primer—I clowned, waited, futzed, until I caught his eye with an interesting move and he returned.

Partly his inattention was the result of an intense, lonely culture shock. But his wandering was also due to fatigue. In Russia, he performed rarely; one performance a month was not uncommon in the large Kirov company. This problem was compounded by the structure of ballet classes, the morning exercises made into brief combinations that don't develop aerobic or muscular endurance beyond what is required for the short variations in the ballet repertoire.

Photo by Martha Swope, 1976.

Misha began to understand the logic of my movements. While I wanted a literal, athletic heroism from him, capitalizing on his unsurpassed virtuosity in the male domain of ballet—jumps. multiple pirouettes, batterie—I wanted it in a new form. At first, Misha couldn't locate his balance off center, and his face would cloud when I asked for turns and large jets that twisted or lay far back from his supporting leg. Then I would demonstrate the movement I wanted, and, as though he had ingested my body, he would mime my action perfectly (trained in acting and music as well as dance at the Kirov, Misha was an excellent mime and he always loved becoming characters-including me). Actually it was easy for him to pick up my movements because our proportions are uncannily similar. Slowly, he also learned how to come out of the strange movement, watching me catch my weight just a little lower than normal, or in turning, reverse my momentum a hair before usual. coming to understand that the trick was in the timing-actually.

[…] I also began incorporating parts of Misha into the dance, embedding his idiosyncrasies into the work, using as a signature for the opening variation one of his particular gestures: he dips his head, runs his fingers through his dripping hair, then tosses his head back. This delighted him, for this gesture and this dance were his and his alone, and it was a desire for such freedom and personal expression that had drawn him to the United States in the first place.

Photo by Martha Swope, 1976.

When we began working, I intended setting the ballet to Bach's "Partita Number 2 in D Minor." Sublimely musical, Misha knew intuitively how to take his pulse from the Bach-pulling back from it, digging under it, soaring with it. But the music was getting a little heavy. I wasn't sure the American public—or I myself, for that matter—was up for such deep soulfulness from the Russian guest in our midst. The rehearsals had begun to drag. Misha's thirst for artistic adventure, to be the first one there, was something I associated in my mind with his love for ice fishing. To witness his artistic process was like watching a man sitting patiently on a fjord in the middle of nowhere, just him and the frozen water, waiting for a fish to take the bait, for days, maybe weeks—any length of time so long as the mission was complete. In this regard we were alike—we both liked being on the edge of nowhere—but sometimes his tenacity would turn into petulance, intransigence for its own sake; there would be flashes of rivalry, and I could sense a stalemate brewing. Then we would both instinctively know it was time to recess to the water cooler, and there, at a safe distance from the studio, on neutral ground—and unable to speak the other's language, thank God—we'd waste no time talking it out. We'd simply look at each other, see ego coming out of our ears like steam, and laugh it off. A little hug and back we'd go, into the fray, pushing and racing each other toward another unique combination of our individual personalities, striving for that new boundary where the body has never yet been. 

That summer I worked hard not to fall in love. Misha, in his mid-twenties, was probably as close to physical perfection as anyone need ever see, but he was clearly alone and a loner. No one was going to change that. Perhaps if I could have acknowledged myself as his counterpart, also a person with maybe ten friends in the Western world, alone and a loner, then things could have been easier between us. But I was not yet ready to accept a personal life on the run. I also felt that to maintain the distance and clarity that sees without prejudice, I should fight to remain unattached. So. given the choice between a personal relationship with Misha and a great ballet. I was opting for the ballet.

Misha was scheduled to leave soon for a three-week barnstorming stint and, to get the ballet as thoroughly prepared as possible, we worked on duets in addition to his solos. His partner was Gelsey Kirkland, a wonderful dancer whose work habits drove me crazy.

First of all, she always arrived at least half an hour late. The habit was worse than a mere irritation—her tardiness threw the whole ballet off schedule. But this was just the beginning. Once in the studio, she had to make the right selection of practice skirts, of which she kept a seemingly never-ending supply in her bag—long chiffons, short taffetas, plus thousands of barrettes and three or four pairs of leg warmers, all of which she had to pin, fold, and otherwise beguile into shape. And then the ankle still hurt, after all this.

It was this ankle that finally parted us. Always claiming she was frail—though somehow I found this suspect, because she was a workhorse when she wanted to be, pushing herself nonstop with a fierce commitment that even I found extraordinary—Gelsey asked to be released from the ballet because of her injury. But I wondered how much she really wanted out because of her temperament, her fear that this was going to be Misha's ballet, not hers. This wasn't my plan. I was determined that everyone in the ballet be shown to the very best of his or her abilities, and I very much wanted to explore Gelsey's natural love of movement and her exquisite New York City Ballet technique. However, her bottom—line fear of anything beyond her control made working with her an agony.

Photo by Max Waldman, 1976.

So now we had to find another partner. Natalia Makarova was the likely next choice, but there were problems with her. Rumors circulated, claiming friction between her and Misha. Misha said he'd go along if I wanted her, but I didn't: from the upper ramp that looked down into all the studios, I could easily see that she was temperament in spades. Her passion was also the wonder of her dancing. A wild, free spirit, she was capable of altering movement to her own divine purpose. But while this habit was great for her onstage, I decided her way of working might be something of a tension provoker in my rehearsals so I decided to forgo the opportunity of working with her just yet. Instead I opted for a much less famous, lovely dancer of exactly the right size and proportions for Misha to partner and one who would be grateful for the opportunity. Marianna Teherkassky, a beautiful, small, dark-haired woman, fit the Gelsey mold but was much sturdier. I had a feeling she would need to be.

I drafted a drama for the ballet. Misha was a womanizer, and being perverse, I decided to give him his wish: every woman in the company. There would be two principals, the little one, Marianna, and a big one who towered over him, capable of squashing him, a terrifying, dominating Marta-esque figure in juxtaposition to Marianna's lovely petite coquette. Martine van Hamel fit this image perfectly; she was a gloriously expansive and still very feminine beauty, extraordinarily strong on pointe and capable of enveloping space in a way that ordinarily requires a masculine drive.

In addition I would give him the chorus—a double chorus, eight girls in each-for whom I developed some of the most difficult movement in the piece. I like to side with the underdog and I figured that the valiant among them would view this as a challenge. a promise of a future beyond the chorus and into larger things.

Meantime, the chorus would be a little less boring place to be. Then I changed the music. Inspired by Misha's birthday—the same as Mozart's—1 decided to exchange the baroque for the rococo. I chose Haydn's Symphony No. 82 in C—"The Bear." an appropriate choice, I thought, for a Russian. The four movements would be the dramatic "acts" of the dance. The first would introduce Misha and his two dates—big and little-and end in an impasse: each would have to show more of her stuff. The little one, with the entire chorus as reinforcement, got the second movement (my double-chorus concept fit nicely with the music, which was essentially a series of variations). The third movement belonged to the big one, with the rest of the ensemble and her own cavalier (Clark Tippet in the original cast, one of the rare members of ABT with some modern dance in his background). Then Misha crashes this party—the fourth movement—and wins everyone in the ballet, another instance of art imitating life since he had already captured the heart of the dance world.

But what of Misha's original reasons for wanting to dance in America? How did they fit into the ballet? I sat at a restaurant alone on Thanksgiving (Bob had Jesse over the holiday) and contemplated this Russian so in love with American pop culture. Astaire was his idol—not a strange choice for a dancer. To Misha, Astaire was a mortal elevated to godhood, not the other way around, not the Apollo descended, that generic heavenly being that so many of Misha's ballet roles called for. Could I get more of this quality into the ballet for Misha? What of the Broadway part of Misha who wanted to dance Jerome Robbins' musical comedy and jazz? Did we have any of that in the ballet for him? We Americans wanted to see him dig his teeth into our culture. But I saw no opportunity for this in Haydn. To broaden Misha's range in the piece. I decided to start with him introducing the whole circus to come. Taking a page from The Raggedy Dances, where I had combined Mozart with Joplin, I mixed the Haydn with Joseph Lamb, a successor of Scott Joplin's. These were frontiersmen of jazz. America's pop culture, and this beginning was where Misha would start.

As I studied the Haydn fourth movement for the nine thousandth time—I wanted to be completely prepared for Misha's return because we would have very little rehearsal time before the premiere—the title occurred to me: Push Comes to Shove. A little trashy for such a grand institution as ABT, but then maybe a posh audience would be grateful for a little funk. Besides, there was a yin and yang to the words—as well as the obvious sexual hook—that suggested the juxtapositions in the ballet: the old classical forms of ballet versus jazz and its own classicism, the East of Misha and the West of me (though which of us was push and which shove was up for grabs). Then too, there was a personal reference I knew would please Misha: the name of the great Kirov instructor, responsible for Misha's development from the time he first entered the academy as a child, was Alexandr Pushkin.

So that's where we were when Misha returned: same material, completely different music, two paramours and two choruses instead of one, the responsibility of hosting the whole event resting on Misha's shoulders, and a joke for the title of his premiere piece.

If he was shocked he didn't let on. Part of our deal always was— up for anything.

We started working on the Lamb rag, transforming this Apollo into Astaire by moving his weight down, centering him further back into his legs. Working into his new character. Misha looked horrible, hideously out of whack, his poor feet, locked into their tightly confining black slippers, trying to learn parallel movement, syncopated timing, and a new, lower-to-the-ground balance, all in one fell swoop. But instead of being daunted, Misha took delight in his clumsiness. Soon he had stopped looking in the mirror-because what he saw there was too awful. Instead he began to visualize the movement for himself through its feel, reveling in the dangerous risks.

At the same time, we worked on the two solos I had given him before he had left. Misha had put the time on the road to extraordinary use. He had parsed the movement by himself, working out the transitions in his own way. His solutions were breathtaking. He was learning to maneuver around an ever tighter base and the precision and audacity of his leaps and pirouettes astonished me.

Everyone watched his rehearsals for the moments of greatness, all of us feeling we had participated in making him ours, changing him from our guest into a cousin. If you were a dancer you could not but love him. He was just that good. The last touch was a hat. Misha would enter fondling a bowler, establishing his character with a single dramatic prop: he was the lovable rake. And in the course of the ballet he would live up to his reputation-every woman would be his, and we would approve. (Some feminist I turned out to be.)

Then it was time. Misha and I exchanged opening-night presents—he gave me a nineteenth—century crystal pendant shaped like a very fat heart with a diamond center. I gave him two photographs of himself taken in rehearsal-the orchestra struck the first (as requested) slightly off-key note, the curtain rose, Misha sauntered into the spot.

He was nervous, but the actor in him quieted the dancer, telling him to focus on his role, and the hat. He introduced the two women, and the audience started to fidget: "Is she going to cheat us? This guy hasn't gotten off the ground once."

Then the Haydn began, and there's nothing but darkness on-stage, as I delay the inevitable for as long as possible. At the very last moment the spot hits him and he's off. He circles, runs his fingers through his hair, paces, gathers himself, and he's in the air.

It was a moment every dance aficionado hopes for—a moment in dance history. From there on he's in perpetual motion, soaring. spinning, feet flying, back working overtime, releasing as much energy during his two variations as any audience has ever seen from any dancer, while never compromising his technical purity.

Martine and Marianna follow, each with small solo passages in the first movement as well, during which Misha, unbeknownst to either woman, observes them from upstage. We begin to see the dramatic question is not which woman he will choose but whether he will pick any at all. When, at the end of the second movement, Marianna pulls Misha in from the wings and confronts him with the whole chorus, he's only momentarily overpowered by this ocean of femininity: within moments he's vanquished them.

Martine dominates the third movement, and the company gets an opportunity to look as strong as possible, setting a high mark for Misha to top, which he does at the start of the fourth, entering on the deep diagonal with double sauts de basque, flying higher than anyone has ever seen and still keeping his bowler on his head with a free hand and a big grin on his face. Enter chorus, ensemble, and soloists together, and from now, wherever Misha goes, he seems to be in the way, about to be trampled, his life in imminent danger.

Ringleader as clown and underdog—a favorite role for those of us who are short—he tries to maintain order, getting bashed and ignored as he tosses out hats for everyone. Finally the whole chorus bears down on him and the music stops: he pauses with both arms formed into a cross over his head, warding off this swarm of vampires. Then the music resumes and so does the little one, interjecting herself between the girls and him, saving his life. Everyone else pours in to celebrate the final chords, Haydn thoughtfully ending the symphony about twelve times. On the last of the finishing flourishes, Misha tosses his own hat high in the air, and dozens of other hats, snuck onstage in the last moments of skittering chaos, fly up to meet it, celebrating his battering, bruising, incontestable triumph: "Hats off, gentlemen, a winner!"