Twyla Tharp, the legendary
83-year-old American choreographer who "throughout her
sixty-year career has passed through eras and styles making
history along the way," is the Golden Lion for career
achievement of Biennale Danza 2025, the Venice artistic
foundation said Friday.
Brazilian performer, author and director Carolina Bianchi, who
centres her work on the radical experience of the body, is the
winner of the Silver Lion.
The Lions, approved by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di
Venezia at the recommendation of the artistic director Wayne
McGregor, will be awarded during the 19th International Festival
of Contemporary Dance, which will take place in Venice from July
17th to August 2nd 2025.
Raised at the school of the American Ballet Theatre and then in
the studios of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and training
for a short time with Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp founded her own
company in 1965, the Biennale said.
Since then, with her dance, Twyla Tharp has liberated bodies and
minds from conventions and stereotypes, moving with experimental
audacity through all the genres - from tap to jazz dance, from
post-modern to neoclassical - and reinventing her original style
at each step with remarkable combinatorial skill.
There is no form of performance that Twyla Tharp has not turned
her attention to, leaving her own distinctive artistic mark:
from the temples of dance, becoming part of the repertory of the
major international companies (among the many: Joffrey Ballet,
American Ballet Theater, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, New
York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company),
to the world of cinema (one in particular: Hair by Milos Forman)
and musicals (for example reinventing the most classic of the
classics, Singin' in the Rain), as well as video, pop and rock
(with Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, David Byrne), and finally
fashion and television, collecting awards and success (a Tony
Award and two Emmy Awards, among others), beloved by the public,
critics and artists such as Baryshnikov".
As Wayne McGregor writes in his motivation: "Twyla Tharp is
nothing short of a phenomenon. Her revolutionary contributions
to the global dance ecology are unrivalled by her work that
combines rigour and play, classical discipline, and ballet
technique with modern dance and natural movements, as well as
radically innovative choreography for stage and film. Twyla
Tharp is one of the most important choreographers alive".
Twyla Tharp will inaugurate Biennale Danza Thursday July 17th at
the Teatro Malibran (with a repeat performance on July 18th)
with the European premiere of a diptych that celebrates the
sixtieth anniversary of her company (Diamond Jubilee Tour), and
which will depart on a long tour of the United States on January
26th, starting from Minneapolis. Twyla Tharp Dance will perform
Diabelli, the celebrated choreography created in 1998 to the 33
variations by Beethoven, and Slacktide, the new creation on
Aguas da Amazonia by Philip Glass, a composer with whom Tharp
has had a long-standing collaboration.
In Venice, Twyla Tharp will also be a mentor for the 16 dancers
and 2 choreographers who will be selected for the 2025 edition
of Biennale College.
photo: Tharp getting Kennedy Center honour in 2008
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