THARP'S DYLAN CIRCUS RETURNS HER TO AN OLDER STYLE OF DANCE

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 31, 2006.

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- ``The Times They Are A-Changin''' is Twyla Tharp's second attempt to revolutionize the Broadway musical. She has merely succeeded in turning some two dozen Bob Dylan songs into a gaudily illustrated songbook.

Tharp, undeniably one of the great choreographers of our era, was somewhat more successful with her animation of Billy Joel hits, the 2002 ``Movin' Out.'' But even there her concept and staging skills were inferior to her dance-making prowess.

For ``Times'' she's imposed a tale to make the often- hallucinatory Dylan numbers cohere as a narrative based on the age-old themes of generational conflict and the triumph of good over evil.

Songs like ``Blowin' in the Wind,'' ``Desolation Row'' and ``Mr. Tambourine Man'' are bent, often to the point of distortion, to fit the contrived scenario, and a program note is still required to clarify it.

The setting is a broken-down traveling circus. The main characters are its ringmaster, Captain Ahrab (Thom Sesma), a grotesque power freak whose chief means of communication is physical abuse; Coyote (Michael Arden), his son, equal parts generic goodness and post-adolescent rebellion; and Cleo (Lisa Brescia), who serves as animal tamer, all-purpose showgirl and dad and son's lust/love interest.

A Swell Quintet

Their singing, abetted by a swell quintet suspended high in the air, ranges from all right (Brescia) to fine (Arden). But Santo Loquasto, a frequent Tharp collaborator, is as much a star of the piece as anyone in the cast. He has provided a set and costumes that glamorize the tawdry, ramshackle world of the down- and-out carnival denizens.

The show doesn't dance much, but it certainly moves -- relentlessly. Operating with manic energy, a posse of seven clowns (six male dancers, one gauche female) engage in high-end acrobatics and gymnastics, mediocre stilt-walking, juggling and unicycle pedaling and all manner of adroit stuff with ropes.

The last category peaks with one fellow blithely skipping rope like a schoolgirl while simultaneously jumping in the whirling helixes of Double Dutch.

The whole business is amped up by a trampoline-studded floor that sends the feats flying.

Tharp's choreographic gift is expressed more subtly in a few spates of dancing for Coyote and Cleo -- agile movers, but not pros. Their burgeoning romance is expressed through touch dancing expanded just a little into Fred and Gingerish charm and wit.

Colloquial Roots

This kind of dancing, rooted in the colloquial, is what Tharp mixed with ballet and jazz in the '70s, creating on her own company such wickedly intelligent and engaging works as ``Eight Jelly Rolls'' and ``Sue's Leg.''

Tharp abandoned this mode -- in which her genius flourished best -- long ago. Even some of her later works for the presumably tamer world of concert dancing resemble her Broadway manner: dangerous athletic feats in dazzling light, enabled by music that won't let you go, wrapped in striking costumes and dry-ice fogs.

What is the 1986 ``In the Upper Room,'' which has American Ballet Theater's audiences cheering themselves hoarse this season, if not the prequel to ``The Times They Are A-Changin'''?

``The Times They Are A-Changin''' is at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 W. 47th St. Information: +1-212-307-4100 or http://www.timestheyareachangin.com.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.