Cutting edge

Wayne McGregor has called her a phenomenon and “One of the most important choreographers alive. Her revolutionary contributions to the global dance ecology are unmatched, thanks to a body of work that blends rigor and play, classical discipline and ballet technique with modern dance and natural movement, creating radically innovative choreographies for both stage and screen.”
Twyla Tharp, recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2025 Biennale Danza, celebrates her company’s 60th anniversary. Trained at the American Ballet Theater and influenced by Graham, Cunningham, and Taylor, Tharp founded Twyla Tharp Dance in 1965. Since then, she acted as a true catalyst of energy and language, breaking down boundaries between genres: classical and modern dance, jazz and tap, musicals and rock. All can be material for choreography, as long as the content is alive, relevant, and urgent.

What makes her unique is her ability to combine precision and freedom, mathematical gesture and irony, complex structures and everyday movement into a constantly evolving equation. Her style graced stages and media worldwide: from the Joffrey Ballet to the Royal Ballet, from New York City Ballet to the Paris Opera, and into the world of film with Milos Forman (Hair), television, fashion, and music videos. She has collaborated with Mikhail Baryshnikov and choreographed to music by Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, David Byrne, and Philip Glass. Her work moves fluidly between high culture and broad popular appeal, turning choreography into a cultural laboratory that speaks to diverse audiences without ever compromising artistic ambition.

The Biennale honours this extraordinary journey with a European premiere that opens the Festival on July 17 at Malibran Theatre. The Diamond Jubilee Tour presents two emblematic works: Diabelli, a historic 1998 choreography set to Beethoven’s 33 piano variations, and Slacktide, a new creation set to Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia. In Tharp’s dance, music is living matter. Diabelli engages with the geometry of Beethoven’s writing, while Slacktide immerses bodies in a soundscape inspired by the Amazon rivers, performed live by Third Coast Percussion. The aquatic element – with its continuous flow and instability –becomes a metaphor for time and movement, risk and transformation. The pairing of these two works, seemingly distant, reveals an unexpected continuity: “Like Tharp herself,” noted the Minnesota Star Tribune, “Beethoven and Glass deconstruct forms and reassemble them, showcasing their mastery in the process.”