Google Elaine Kudo and you might as well be Googling “Twyla Tharp Sinatra Suite,” so synonymous is Kudo with her experience as a dancer and ballet master for Tharp. Kudo’s three week stint restaging Tharp’s 1996 “Sweet Fields” brings a bit of Tharp to the Modern Dance department at the University of Utah. I sat down with Kudo and Associate Professor in the department Sharee Lane to speak about “Sweet Fields,” Twyla Tharp, and what Baryshnikov was really like.
loveDANCEmore: How did “Sweet Fields” come to the University of Utah?
Sharee Lane: I met Elaine when I was teaching for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet company. This must have been at least seven years ago, and Elaine was there setting “Sweet Fields” on the dancers, and I had the whole week to sit in on her rehearsals and watch her gentle yet patient but challenging spirit get this choreography out of the dancers. And (“Sweet Fields”) is very tough because of its’ unusual style.
When I first saw Elaine, we became friends almost immediately. I was teaching for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in 2001 and Elaine was there, cleaning “Sweet Fields,” getting the dancers ready for another performance. Elaine and I went to have coffee, and over coffee we had the idea to set “Sweet Fields” on the University of Utah dancers.
lDm: So it is your connections with “Sweet Fields” that gave the modern dance department the opportunity to perform it?
Lane: Yes. Elaine has faith in this department. I’ve heard many amazing things about her from other companies where she has taught or set Twyla’s choreography.
lDm: (to Kudo) I won’t ask you how it’s going.
Elaine Kudo: It’s going great.
lDm: (Staging the piece on modern dancers) is a different animal to work with.
Kudo: It is. And both setting it on ballet dancers as well as setting it on modern dancers is a challenge because it’s such an in-between technique. It’s interesting…the ballet dancers will not be grounded and I have to remind them about their arms, to not be so flowery. The modern dancers, I have to keep reminding about their turnout and line. So I have a different pitfall with each group. So you’ve got different problems, and I wouldn’t say that one is greater than the other, it’s just a different set of issues because (Tharp’s) technique actually requires being able to move across the boundaries of each area.
lDm: When did you first start restaging Twyla Tharp’s choreography?
Kudo: Pretty much when I stopped dancing. At the end of 1989 or 1990 is when I stopped dancing at American Ballet Theater after 15 years with them. It started with a trickle. I would stage one piece a year, and now its five or six times a year.
lDm: What do you consider yourself? A choreographer? A teacher? A ballet mistress?
Kudo: It’s a mix of things. I think of myself primarily as a teacher/ballet master. I have taught in a school setting but during that time I’ve been serving as a ballet master for various companies and staging and coaching, so I’m on that end more so than being a choreographer. I have choreographed quite a bit, but it’s not the primary thing in my life.
Lane: What is the difference between classes a Tharp dancer takes and a class a ballet dancer takes before a performance?
Kudo: Twyla believe in a strong ballet technique, so the company always does a purely ballet technique class. When she does workshops though, she experiments with all kinds of movement which she is always incorporating into her choreography…I mean, all the way down to boxing, aerobics, yoga…a lot of cross training. She has always been very interested in what gets people into good physical conditioning.
To develop material, a lot of time she just kind of bops around to music. The choreography becomes more detailed. She doesn’t really talk much but you follow and you pick up as many details as you can…she wants to see how much the dancers can pick up quickly, because it is important to her that they have that kind of eye.
lDm: Was there any improvisation in creating her choreography?
Kudo: It works its way in. There were times in rehearsals where there is a pool of material that you’re supposed to pull from. That was hard for me, coming from the ballet world.
A lot of it is not improvisation, but in the development of choreography, she does require you to think a lot more. Instead of putting something together for you, she might say, “Ok, these are your phrases, now you take every odd number and create your own phrase,” which is more a modern dance concept. That’s how her process was for “Push Comes to Shove.” Some dancers at ABT (American Ballet Theater) thought that it was fun, and some dancers just couldn’t be bothered. I was like “Oh, this is fun. I like this. It’s intriguing,” and Twyla picked up on that right away. That’s how our relationship developed early on.
lDm: When you watch the video of “Sinatra Suite,” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3SFHjfAOl4) it seems like there is a strong character defined in the dance. Did Tharp tell you any imagery or character traits to act out in the piece?
Kudo: She didn’t say, “You should be thinking this here or there.” She let me develop that on my own. But for “Nine Sinatra Songs,”…she already had an image. She gave me actresses— like Ingrid Bergman was the kind of character that should be evoked in the song that’s called “All the Way.” It should be a very settled, stable character who is in a stable relationship that is very trusting.
And there’s a duet (in set to Sinatra’s “That’s Life”) that has a tough character and she gets pushed around a lot and (Tharp) said to think of Ida Lupino, who is a real kind of tough cookie in the same period of black and white movies (as Ingrid Bergman). So I tried to find those people and look at them, to see what kinds of roles they played to get an idea and imagery to work off of.
lDm: Do you pass that imagery and inspiration on?
Kudo: I do. I pass on any words of wisdom that she’s given me.
lDm: Are you allowed to take liberties with Tharp’s choreography?
Kudo: Not usually, but this particular piece has been done many ways. I don’t know what the history of that is. Actually the most interesting thing about “Sweet Fields” is that there is a solo that has been done alternately by a woman and a man, so I think that’s a little bit unusual. This one is a little bit more flexible, but the other pieces usually aren’t.
lDm: Do you have to ask Tharp if you are allowed to change the choreography for “Sweet Fields”?
Kudo: In this case I’m not. When I did “Sweet Fields” at Santa Fe I actually got together with Twyla in front of the videotape and we discussed how we were going to adapt it, because it was the first time. She was quite involved in that shifting of it, but now that its been done so many different times I don’t think I have to run it by her.
lDm: How would you be dancing be different if you hadn’t met Tharp?
Kudo: I performed in a lot of Twyla’s pieces before I actually learned what the technique was about. In some ways I wish that I had danced with the company it a little bit earlier, because overall it made me a better dancer. I feel like I learned so much when I was actually dancing with her company that I wish I had known when I was doing those pieces before.
lDm: Like?
Kudo: Like using weight. Especially in ‘Sinatra’, the partnering was quite difficult. When I did it with Misha (Baryshnikov), a lot of it is about shared weight. As a ballet dancer I was more used to being on one leg and being manipulated.
lDm: Was Baryshnikov good at Tharp’s technique?
Kudo: Umm..no. He kind of just did it the way he did it. And I think that we did a pretty decent job for two ballet dancers but I think if we’d known better, I think we could have even been better at it. If we’d really known what we were supposed to be doing.
And on that note I will leave loveDANCEmore readers thinking of how Baryshnikov could have been any better (read: any sexier) than he was in his performance in “Nine Sinatra Songs.” Kudo will finish restaging the piece this week, and will return for the performance at Kingsbury Hall, which will include a live choir to accompany the piece, March 9th and 10th.
Sofia Strempek
Sofia is an intern with loveDANCEmore and BFA student at the U
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