In musicology, bagatelles are short and unpretentious compositions. This
7-piece array of ballet bagatelles, created originally for Boston Ballet,
takes place on a pristinely surfaced stage overhung and aqueously lighted by
rows of stark, re-arrangeable, florescent light tubes, like those that might
illuminate an aquarium. The mostly barechested men and the sometimes
bathing-capped women reinforce the dance's swimming and/or water connection.
Riding on the music's pulse and/or the dance's momentum, they occasionally
scoot in and out as if jogging, backwards as often as forward. Taking
inspiration from a musical range that goes from 12-tone innovator Anton
Webern through Tango man Astor Piazzolla, Tharp's separate yet continuous
seeming dances curvet over the stage as if the dancers were schools of fish.
One spinning and rocketing male dancer stands apart from the "schools" like
proverbial big fish in the ballet's big pond; likewise, the ballet gives
prominence to a ballerina, sometimes mated with the biggest male "fish." A
secondary ballerina and her partner, appear out of the ballet's darkest
segment, to twine and couple in a slippery pas de deux to "Bella by
Barlight." Driven by a "still waters run deep" current, the dancing of
Waterbaby Bagatelles variously flows alongside, over and through the music's
pulse, at times animating the silence and spaces between the musical
ingredients. The "underwater tango" segment showcases a sassy couple dance
that builds slowly to a stageful of such dancing; the strongly driven "hunt"
bagatelle is a display of strutting men, full of "attitude" alongside a
contingent of slithery and/or spasmodic "mermaids." The culminating dance,
"On the Dominant Divide," brings every one of the "swimming" men and women
back into the big picture. Percussion augmented by vocal elements soar as
the dancing and dancers pour into and out of view, like so many swimming
bodies, passing in the night.