Dubbed a "symphonic ballet" by composer Philip Glass, whose specially
commissioned Heroes symphony inspires it, Tharp's 6-sectioned dance was
created for an ensemble of her own dancers. The later dance retains
personal, Tharp-history links to two earlier works in her canon, The
Catherine Wheel and In the Upper Room. Maimone's austere and basic costuming
helps establish some of the dance's opposing forces: inky blacks suggest the
darker elements and shiny silvers, lighter, opposite forces. One of the
dance's recurring moments is for a threesome of barechested "heroes" to
stand in tandem, stockstill, braced by wide-planted feet and further
flattened by arms anchored and angled out of hands firmly held on the hips.
Repeatedly this male "wall" stands unmovingly as the dance's most prominent
woman throws herself emphatically and horizontally at the "barrier." With
each separate musical section, the three central men, who variously change
from silvery slacks to black shorts, connect and/or contrast to the lone
woman in their world. Though their posturing and dancing comes devoid of
overt mimetic detail or narrative underpinning, the dance activity yields a
succession of chilling episodes and incidents. Working around the three
unshakable "heroes," the "opposing" dancers weave, dart and hurl themselves
about the "others," suggesting in the process world of rivals and/or gangs.
The dance's opening acts like a movie preview, introducing the characters
and indicating a tone of narcissistic obsession?our heroes not being,
necessarily what they seem. The second segment reveals womanizing behavior
on the men's part, doing so with force. The next betrays a hero against hero
affair, with the outsider/hero being assaulted by the insider/group. The
fourth section includes the heors in the ballroom where all but one has a
partner/mate. The fifth section involves a "wall" of men against which a
woman throws herself and finds their responses nonexistent. Previously these
men have caught her surely, if robotically. Now, they let her rebound from
her body slamming trajectory. In the end it is merely their standing their
ground that defines these men as heroes.