Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis, where Elvis met Look Now producer

Pretty self-explanatory
johnfoyle
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Re: 'Nightspot' - Elvis/Twyla Tharp ballet, LA, Oct Oct.24-26'08

Post by johnfoyle »

http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/elvis ... allet-wtf/


Elvis Costello and Ballet: WTF?!

by LA Weekly
October 31, 2008 4:27 PM

By Tom Christie

Miami City Ballet, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Oct. 24-26

You don't have to know a lot about dance to know when you're in the presence of dance genius. It took all of one second after the curtain rose last Friday night on the Miami City Ballet's performance of George Balanchine™'s Symphony in Three Movements: A chorus line of young, pony-tailed women in white leotards, one arm aloft against a sky-blue scrim, each raised hand delicately falling. The image seemed of its time and place – New York and all that signifies (the theater and all that jazz) in 1972 and perhaps earlier, with Balanchine reflecting on his 40-some years there. Likewise the movement that followed: casual but sassy, energetic and buoyant; almost cute -- no, definitely cute, as if these young women (and men) were padding (quickly!) around their Manhattan apartments barefoot. Life here and now, it seemed to say.

I was reminded of George Gershwin, and the American (or, more to the point, the America) in him, in his work. One doesn't necessarily think of Balanchine and the lighter side of dance but in fact he had an extensive show-biz resume, having choreographed "Ziegfeld Follies of 1936" on Broadway and worked on four films, including Goldwyn Follies with Gershwin, during which the composer died. (Balanchine would later create a ballet, Who Cares?, to several Gershwin songs.) Given the opportunities to return to ballet, of course, Balanchine did, but he did so with those American pop influences – he greatly admired Fred Astaire, for instance -- in tow.

Written to Stravinsky’s piece of the same name (which was made up of three separate pieces written for, but unused by, the movies), Symphony is as much a complex orchestration as is the score. If, as has been said, Balanchine revolutionized ballet by knocking the ballerina off her throne and replacing her with choreography, you see it here: all 32 dancers moving all the time. (They’ve left their apartments, perhaps, for the streets of Manhattan.) Out of this teeming mass comes Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg, a potent wonder in pink. Other highlights followed on Friday night, with soloists Patricia Delgado and Alex Wong, and a lot more tight ensemble work. MCB director Edward Villella was in the original cast of Symphony, and he has imbued his corps with insight, comfort and an infectious joie de Balanchine.

Following the crowded urban Symphony was another Balanchine piece, the folky pas de deux, Tarantella, danced with muscular verve by Jeanette Delgado and Renato Penteado. It was a charming six minutes, undercut only by the dancers’ big, frozen smiles, and their slightly kooky costumes. This is an Italian folk dance, after all, not the talent section of an America beauty pageant. Still, Miami City Ballet’s sampling of Balanchine makes you want to see all of Balanchine.

Can’t say the same for Christopher Wheeldon, at least based on his Liturgy, a cornographic spoonfest writhed prettily by MCB’s Haiyan Wu and Carlos Quenedit. This piece received the loudest applause of the evening from the crowd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which just goes to show – what, I’m not sure. Liturgy is written for Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, which was beautiful even in the L.A. Opera Orchestra’s less-than-convincing performance. But Wheeldon’s piece seems more aptly combined with the music of, say, Kenny G. That virtuosic noodler gets loud applause, too.

If after Wheeldon one was feeling that an intermission exit might have been the best strategy, the final performance was distressing confirmation. A major commission by the MCB, Twyla Tharp’s Nightspot, with original music by Elvis Costello and costumes by Isaac Mizrahi, is a major dud. At the pre-performance talk, Villella foreshadowed the evening’s ultimate doom by noting that Nightspot “is not something New York critics want to see.” He added that even ballet is a business, and this piece, based on the Miami nightclub scene, was meant to bring in new audiences – that is, non-ballet people. In other words, this piece sucks – get ready for it!

But even when ready for it, Nightspot is disappointing. Hot women (including Kronenberg, less delightful) and hot-tempered men (who always seem frighteningly ready to Samba) meet and greet, hook-up and get jealous. The men, one even down to his underwear, actually fight. Call it “Southside Story.” There are, here and there, a few moments of lyrical beauty, when Tharp seems to forget her assignment, but Nightspot is nevertheless one giant piece of hot-peppered cheese.

It is for one thing far too long. You can almost hear Tharp saying to herself, “Gosh, they paid me a lot of money, so I’d better keep it going regardless of logic or inspiration!” In an interminable middle, she brings on a very large piece of ribbon attached to one female dancer and trailed after by several men, all of whom, er, get wrapped up in its swirling embrace. (A Christo love fantasy?) Perhaps I’m missing some essential Tharpism, but this ribbon thing just smacked of her having no actual thematic ideas; it is, literally, an extension.

As for the music, it would be best to say nothing at all. Costello is, as we all know, a wonderful writer of short stories – sung stories – but a novelist, a composer, he is clearly not. None of his spark is heard here, none of his incisive wit and intelligence. Despite its upbeat intent, his Nightspot is a dull Latinesque dirge, a failed attempt to do for Miami what Tom Waits did for Hamburg in Robert Wilson’s The Black Rider.

When the curtain came down on Nightspot, several people in the front rows immediately stood. As the curtain rose again, it caught them in what might have appeared to the dancers to be a standing ovation, but in fact these people were already heading for the exits. No offense meant, I think, to the adept and often exciting Miami City Ballet corps, but a message to Mr. Villella, perhaps, from New York critics and L.A. fans alike: More Balanchine, please; less cheese.
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Re: 'Nightspot' - Elvis/Twyla Tharp ballet, LA, Oct Oct.24-26'08

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Ouch! Is a CD release of the score planned? (It's not out there already, is it?) One to avoid if so!
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Re: 'Nightspot' - Elvis/Twyla Tharp ballet, LA, Oct Oct.24-26'08

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/det ... resh/7715/

Limon Fresh

But Twyla Tharp dumbs down down down

By Donna Perlmutter

11/06/2008



Time passes. Reality blurs. Quality ebbs. Unsuspecting audiences forget what used to be. Or maybe they never knew things were any different before.

Well, here’s a remedy – for those who went to the brand new “Myth,” by the much-ballyhooed Moroccan-Flemish choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui at Royce Hall’s UCLA Live one night, and the Jose Limon Dance Company at Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A., the next, followed by Miami City Ballet’s latest Twyla Tharp piece several days later.

First, you saw a two-hour woozy extravaganza that passes for avant-garde entertainment posing as a sitcom circus comprising multilingual wackadoodles wrapped up in Middle Eastern musical diversions and tumbling acts and sight gags by the yard, with a 6-foot-3 anorectic black transvestite from Alabama singing “I Feel Pretty” into his hand mirror and then reading the riot act in his best hissy-fit drawl and prancing around in high heels to all the tedious dolts that he vamped onstage.

You know what? It was the kitchen sink. You or I could have concocted our own set of meaningless motley whimsies ad nauseum. And to think that hypesters invoke the name Pina Bausch – Pina Bausch – in their advertising!

But if you were smart enough to trot across town to Luckman the second night, as all the savvy seekers did, you saw what brought us to modern dance in the first place. Yes, back in the 1950s, there were real minds at work, artists like choreographer Anna Sokolow.

She put up a masterpiece called “Rooms,” one that conjured universal urban aloneness: Eight dancers, each sitting on a chair and staring blankly, each under an overhead light, gave the word solitary new meaning. And for the next 50 minutes, to Kenyon Hopkins’s searingly melancholy, angular jazz score – composed in tandem with Sokolow, just as Aaron Copland made Appalachian Spring for Martha Graham – we saw eight expressionist scenarios played out one at a time, purely in isolated, inner-lit movement, but equal to what? Alice Munro short stories?

Jim May’s pitch-perfect staging and the gifted Limon dancers, with Charles Owens leading Luckman’s knockout Jazz Ensemble, were extraordinary. The total impact of sound and image is still resonating. The company resists any lessening of its late founder’s potency.

Twyla Tharp, on the other hand, whose big, new, expensive opus “Nightspot” came to the Music Center courtesy of Eddy Villella’s Miami City Ballet, seems to have given up all vestiges of her choreographic signature and originality. Remember “Deuce Coupe” – the Beach Boys epic that dazzled us with its endless convergence of Tharpian quarter-step squiggles and spread a fizz of bubbly sleight-of-body maneuvers to match the good-vibes music? Or “Nine Sinatra Songs,” which made what’s wonderful even more laden with meaning via her elongated ballroom style of internal fantasy, and which seemed to do for the vocals what Balanchine did for Stravinsky’s works?

Well, forget all that. Forget the brilliant pop-artist-choreographer. Now we have Tharp the generic entertainer (a bookend to Cherkaoui, the performance-art entertainer).

With Isaac Mizrahi’s barroom-floozy costumes, a whole character load of them in red, red, nothing but red, and a smoky set dimly lighted with, yes, red spotlights, and all varieties of angry-to-jealous-to-amorous displays acted out by the dancers, whose cliched choreography could’ve been etched by anybody, I would say the piece belonged to Vegas-lounge-act schlockerama. Dumbed-down-dance like we never believed Tharp could churn out.

Pop paragon Elvis Costello, who took every compositional opportunity afforded him here, certainly seemed to give Tharp his best shot. There was a pit orchestra, for which he wrote some segments in the style of Mahler and Kurt Weill, and a Latin jazz band upstage that quoted Herb Alpert and inevitably kicked in with tango rhythms. Nothing helped.


Luckily (thanks to smart man Villella), the marvelous Miamians could depend on Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements, with Stravinsky at his grandest as impetus, to strut their virtuosic stuff. Similar good news came with Christopher Wheeldon’s pas de deux “Liturgy,” set to an Arvo Part score, and danced with supple perfection and mystical quietude by Haiyan Wu and Carlos Quenedit.
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Re: 'Nightspot' - Elvis/Twyla Tharp ballet, LA, Oct Oct.24-26'08

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyl ... TT20091203

Dance's Twyla Tharp gives lessons in collaboration

Thu Dec 3, 2009


By Ellen Wulfhorst

(extract)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Collaboration is critical in the workplace, choreographer Twyla Tharp writes in a new book that contends while most workers do not team up with artistic greats as she does, the secrets to success are universal.

In her book, subtitled "Life Lessons for Working Together," Tharp tells stories about collaborating with friends and institutions, laced with tidbits of advice on such topics as communication and commitment.

"There are two things that ultimately are important. One is respect, and one is the bottom line," she said in an interview with Reuters. "Everybody needs to understand what the job is and see it the same way or it won't work."

'TWO DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, SAME MESSAGE'

One of her more entertaining tales involved musician Elvis Costello, with whom she collaborated on a piece entitled "Nightspot." Busy with other work and responsibilities, Costello missed deadline after deadline until she and he devised a long-distance, "virtual" way to work together, she said.

http://www.amazon.com/Collaborative-Hab ... 599&sr=1-1
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

An extract (scanned from the book) from "Life Lessons for Working Together" by Twyla Twarp -

Of course, as soon as I met Elvis Costello, I felt I'd been worried over nothing.

In person, Elvis Costello is a lovable bear of a man with a tiny gap between his front teeth. He wears cowboy boots and a stiff black straw hat and his smile suggests his sly Irish wit. At our first meeting there is no posturing or gossip. Elvis couldn't be a nicer guy. He's a worker: authentic, straight to the point, smart. And organized? He takes notes on his laptop.
That first meeting was a kind of mutual pitch session. In our case, Elvis had brought some of his older songs that he wanted to reference in our score, as well as a couple of sketches for new music. I'd sampled the full range of his work, and I'd edited a rough video of some of my old work synced to cues from his songs. All of this I considered "kindling" to get the fire going.

As we say our good-byes, Elvis promises to have a scratch track for me to take to Miami for my spring rehearsal period.

In any collaboration, there is no one way. Go with whatever works.

Considering the timetable in Miami — two weeks now in the spring with the dancers and five more in the fall, five hours a day, 175 hours total— I'm reasonably calm. I know that sounds like a lot of rehearsal time. It's not. It's a drop in the bucket. But the dancers are doing so well I decide we can afford a midway approach between weeks of improvisation and a work completed before I have even begun rehearsals.

Just one problem. No music yet from Elvis Costello.

And now comes the surprise: Elvis misses the first deadline.

Even worse: Though I am sympathetic — Elvis has a wonderful new family with understandable complications — lie says he won't be able to deliver even a rough working score until after the first rehearsal period is over.
I'm devastated. Elvis promised me at the very least some new melodies when I was in Miami. Now he suggests I use the rough track he'd brought to our first meeting. I use this very preliminary music as a reference, but I also mix in some songs by the Gipsy Kings, always a great dancing fallback.

I'm also not devastated. Elvis is a pro. Surely there will still be time before the second rehearsal period for him to deliver.

But Elvis misses his second deadline as well. Why? He's on the road, opening for Bob Dylan! In an e-mail, he explains that he is working on the ballet in a trailer next to Dylan's, but "it's hard to keep `All Along the Watchtower' out of the score." I e-mail back: "I know what you mean."

Elvis isn't a slacker. If anything, he's doing too much juggling his family; various administrators, managing schedules, his touring. This ballet program puts one too many balls in the air for him.

Ever the gent, Elvis does the gentlemanly thing and offers to end the collaboration. I don't want this. Losing Elvis would be devastating to the company, which had already done an enormous amount of fund-raising for the project, a lot of it, I am sure, based on his name and reputation. I tell him, "We need to make this work—any way that's good for you."

Elvis agrees.

That's when our collaboration became virtual.

Elvis, feeling bad, undertakes a herculean effort. He sends e-mails and MP3s
at all hours of the night and day from even- time zone on earth as he squeezes work into a touring schedule that already is leaving very little time for his family. I receive segments almost daily and try to feel the flow of the ballet from them. I spend hours syncing and cueing, editing my Miami rehearsal video to Elvis's new music.

Using Final Cut Pro (a video editing program), MP3s, and e-mail, I create a virtual dance of sorts. Using the phrases created in Miami, some of them originally set to the Gipsy Kings, I reedit the dance so it's synced with the new music from Elvis.

By the time I arrive in Miami for the next rehearsal period, Elvis, amazing man that he is, has kept his word — he's delivered a synthesizer score for the entire ballet. I proceed to invent new material for the second half of the ballet while Crista doubles back to rehearse the dancers with material from the spring and a mile-long list of cuts, loops, and juxtaposed phrases that I'd edited in New York.

It can be done. You can have a virtual collaboration with a partner who's just ... not there. This is not, however, an unequivocal endorsement of virtual collaboration.

Miami. Three days before the premiere. Elvis arrives.


He goes directly to the orchestra rehearsal and begins to appreciate some of the challenges he will face. The string section is much too small to deliver a big "Hollywood" sound; pushed, the sound system begins generating awesome (but not in a good way) feedback. Some of the players in the Latin band are not quite up to the music's difficulty and some tweaking will be required.

I go to the music rehearsal so I can hear the score as the audience would, but I remind myself to stay uninvolved and to leave Elvis to his work.

I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster.

My decision not to step in here is really the biggest help I can give Elvis. With lights, costumes, and injuries, I have issues enough. I may be the director of the entire program, but live bands are not my domain. I can only slow Elvis down or, worse, get in his way. If you take away a single piece of advice from this chapter, here is the one to remember: Don't sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people's zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don't insert yourself unless you're running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak.

The dress rehearsal is a disaster. Dancers miss their entrance cues, some are unhappy with aspects of their costumes, and two of the leading men are injured, though they're determined to perform.

Good.

Good? Yes, because it's a tradition that a terrible last rehearsal guarantees a good opening night. Of course I don't count on this, so I fester quietly. Tradition also says that leaders remain calm under stress. That is a canard. I have seen very few instances of this in my career, but I try to set an example. When the tension mounts, I work out even more than usual, hoping that, as it so often does, exercise will drain anxiety.

In the film business, right after a movie finishes shooting, there's a gathering called a wrap party (as in, "It's a wrap," meaning that it's finished). In my world, I see opening nights as a wrap party—that is, the ballet is finally wrapped in its costumes, its lights, its hair and makeup, and its full live orchestration. It's a momentary triumph of theatricality over "real" life, and it's to be cherished.

Opening night, ready or not, is also cause for a gala party, a celebration that is— as in Miami—a mainstay of the company's fund-raising for the year. Usually I am miserable; I have to work hard to suppress a scowl. It's not that I don't like social events—though I don't — but that I am in a postpremiere snit about the performance. I want to scream: "The thing is not what you saw tonight!" But no one wants to hear that—certainly none of my collaborators. So I struggle to get over myself.

Opening night—or any ceremonial event at the completion of a collaboration —is not about: one individual.' It's the celebration of a group endeavor. And that means, if you're the team leader, you want to be sure everyone on the team gets acknowledged.

It's easy to do that tonight. The dancers loved Isaac Mizrahi's costumes, with their hibiscus colors. Elvis Costello brought in a score the musicians enjoyed playing and the cast enjoyed performing. The ovations at the end of the show told us the audience liked us.

Party time is, for me, a continuation of the performance; it's a celebrity star turn. Elvis and I go round to each table, thanking patrons, having photos taken. I'm delighted to see him enjoying this moment. For the year and a half this project has been in his life, he's been a performer, a songwriter, a serious corn-poser, a husband with a very successful wife—and a new father. To this list add extremely gracious party guest.

The ballet? This program would go on to produce the largest box office sales in the company's history. But when a gala audience is presented with both a new dance and an intimate moment with a star, the intimate moment will win every time. Not the music. Not the dance. This is where the celebrity factor pays off.

Elvis knows this. So when the band begins to play "My Funny Valentine" — a song that he's recorded so well it's now one of his signature numbers — he spontaneously takes over the microphone, rewarding the ballet's patrons for their support with a very generously given performance that few others will ever experience: Elvis Costello singing just for them and very close up.
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis

Post by alexv »

Thanks for the extract, John. Great stuff.

My favorite line:

"Now he suggests I use the rough track he'd brought to our first meeting. I use this very preliminary music as a reference, but I also mix in some songs by the Gipsy Kings, always a great dancing fallback".

She opts for the Gypsy Kings over the EC rough track, creating a Gypsy Kings/EC mix-tape. Surely a rarity.
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

http://geniusblog.davidshenk.com/2010/0 ... tharp.html

February 27, 2010

A Conversation with Twyla Tharp

David Shenk

(extract)

DS: You've written about your collaboration with Elvis Costello. One of the ways I think of his work is that he's using his celebrity and his charisma and his vitality as an artist--

TT: -- And don't forget his charm, his charm is devastating.


DS: I don't know him in person, but I'll take your word for it.


TT: He's fantastic. I love him.

DS: He's using all of his skills to bring certain types of music that might normally have a smaller audience and help it find a larger audience. Is that something you also do?

TT: Not so much. Elvis has a big capacity as host. He's a good emcee. I'm not that. If I'm doing a project, if it's for school kids, you want them to understand. If it's for the Joffrey Ballet Company, you want that audience to understand it. If it's a project involved with scientific research then you have that mission to accomplish. But it's not me taking another area and trying to present it through myself as a conduit. It's just my working in different places.
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.bucknell.edu/x64235.xml

Intersection of life, art integral to creativity, success, Tharp says

September 15, 2010

By Julia Ferrante

(extract)

Twyla Tharp, also a director and writer whose work has been honored with Tony and Emmy awards, a National Medal of Arts and a Kennedy Center Honor, was the inaugural speaker in the new Bucknell Forum national speakers series, "Creativity: Beyond the Box," which will run through fall 2011. She has choreographed more than 135 dances and five Hollywood movies and directed and choreographed four Broadway shows, including "Come Fly Away," in which she sets dance to the music of Frank Sinatra. In 2003, she wrote The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, followed last year by The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together.


In her talk, Tharp offered lessons on creativity and collaboration gleaned from a decades-long career working with the likes of Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Mikhail Baryshnikov. She suggested that before setting out to think "out of the box," however, one must "have a box" of basic tools to do the job at hand. She encouraged the audience to think about creativity as doing things in a re-imagined way rather than a completely new way.
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Re: Twyla Tharp's 2008 collaboration with Elvis

Post by Man out of Time »

"Nightspot" never seems to have recovered from the critical drubbing it received in 2008. There are now more details of the performances in Miami in 2008 on Twyla Tharp's website here. Here are some of the main details.

Program

world premiere: March 28, 2008
premiere company: Miami City Ballet
premiere location: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, FL

music by: Elvis Costello
live music by: Opus One Orchestra

Miami City Ballet
principals:
Katia Carranza, Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg, Callie Manning
Jeremy Cox, Isanusi Garcia-Rodriguez, Carlos Miguel Guerra
soloists:
Jeanette Delgado, Zoe Zien
Daniel Baker, Alexandre Dufaur
chorus:
Kyra Homeres, Leigh-Ann Esty, Sara Esty, Ashley Knox
Didier Bramaz, Michael Breeden, Ezra Hurwitz, Amir Yogev
total number of dancers: 18
runtime: 00:39:03

From original program: "Nightspot, a collaboration between two of the most celebrated and sought-after artists of our time, is Miami City Ballet's first major commission. Ms. Tharp has created her ballet on eighteen of the company's dancers and Mr. Costello's composition, which features new music intertwined with motifs from existing songs, is performed by an on-stage dance band as well as a thirty-two piece orchestra in the pit. The costumes are designed by the leading fashion designer, Isaac Mizrahi."

Music

Nightspot
Composed by Elvis Costello
Principal Conductor: Juan Francisco La Manna

Dance Band:
Musical Director/Keyboards: Tim Devine
Drums: Lee Levin
Guitars/Mandolin: Dan Warner
Electric and Upright Bass: Chuck Bergeron
Saxes/Flute/Accordian: Pete Brewer
Saxes: Dave Fernandez
Trumpet: Jason Carder
Trombone: Dante Luciani
Percussion: Gary Mayone

Orchestra:
Concertmaster: Bogumila Zgraja
Assistant Concertmaster: Laszlo Pap
Violin: Claudia Cagnassone, Gennady Aronin, Georgetta Miller, Tony Seepersad, Roslind Lang, Gerry Miller, Sha Zhang, Galina Aronin, Raisa Ilyutovich, Vivian Gonzalez, Stephanie Sibgman
Viola: Renata Guitart, Galina Dennison, Shao-Chin Chien, Michael Davis
Cello: Luisa Bustamante, Angela Maleh, Konstantin Litvinenko, Arthur Abney
Contrabass: Janet Clippard, Ariadna Barbe-Villa
Oboe/English Horn: Dione Chandler
Flute/Piccolo: Sara Stout
Clarinet: Isabel Mora
Bassoon: Geoff Hale
Horn: Jerry Peel
Trumpet: Craig Morris
Trombones: John Kricker, Joel Keene
Harp: Stacey Berkley
Celeste: Francisco Rennó
Timpani: Mark Schubert
Percussion: Mikhail Michaeslon
Musician Contractor: Tim Devine

Performance History

Miami City Ballet
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, FL
March 28, 2008
notes:
Additional performances on March 29-30, 2008

Miami City Ballet
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, West Palm Beach, FL
April 4, 2008
notes:
Additional performances on April 5-6, 2008

Miami City Ballet
Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
April 11, 2008
notes:
Additional performances on April 12-13, 2008

Which all sounds like a lot of effort and rehearsal for nine performances.

MOOT
Last edited by Man out of Time on Sat Aug 04, 2018 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

features new music intertwined with motifs from existing songs,
Which songs were used would be about all I'd like to know about. That kind of wording , though, makes me wonder if it helped Elvis be more receptive to the The Roots when they made the suggestions to pretty much do the same thing. No ballet divas this time probably helped!
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis

Post by johnfoyle »

http://fmrockandpop.com/rock/20610/el_p ... s_costello



R & P: You have a lot of experience in producing Spanish-speaking artists. How did you come across Elvis Costello to co-produce his new album?

Sebastian Krys: I met him ten years ago in Miami when he was making music for a ballet. One of the band's musicians, Dan Warner, introduced it to me.
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Re: Twyla Tharp writes about collaboration with Elvis, where Elvis met Look Now producer

Post by Man out of Time »

Photo from an article in the Miami Herald in 2015, which is sitting behind their paywall, but which had little to do with Nightspot.

Nightspot, Miami, FL
Nightspot, Miami, FL
Nightspot.jpg (33.7 KiB) Viewed 4933 times
I presume this was taken in Miami, at or around the Premiere of Nightspot.... Elvis is looking cheerful, so perhaps it was before the first night.

MOOT
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