Venice, Italy (Aguas da Amazonia)
July 18
https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/biennale-danza-2025-special-preview-london
Twyla Tharp Dance with Third Coast Percussion
July 17 + 18, 2025
La Biennale di Venezia
Among the companies and artists, who with their works will illuminate and interpret the theme of the 19th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, we can anticipate:
TWYLA THARP – The legendary American choreographer and dancer is the Festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, which she will receive on July 19th. Twyla Tharp will inaugurate the Festival on the 17th and 18th of July with the magnetic energy of her choreographies: Slacktide, a world premiere, presented along with her famous 1998 choreography, Diabelli. A diptych to celebrate her sixty-years working with her company, Twyla Tharp Dance, in the Diamond Jubilee Tour. Opened on January 26th in Minneapolis, the tour will travel coast to coast across the United States before coming to La Biennale for the European premiere.
The living, pulsating matter of her dance, the two choreographies unfold along the twin track of the 33 variations for piano composed by Beethoven to the theme of a waltz by Anton Diabelli, and the 9 pieces by Philip Glass, Aguas de Amazonia, each inspired by a river in the rainforest, influenced by the South-American rhythms performed live by the Grammy-award winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion, who play on an amazing set of custom-designed instruments. “You might not normally think of Beethoven as being similar to Glass. Experiencing both composers’ works set to dance by Tharp offered a frame to think of these two composers together. Like Tharp herself, they deconstruct forms and re-assemble them, displaying their mastery in the process” (The Minnesota Star Tribune).
In Venice, Twyla Tharp will also be the special mentor for the 16 dancers and 2 choreographers to be selected for the 2025 edition of Biennale College.