The second of three, jazz-inspired dances, The Bix Pieces comes with a
narrative, spoken by an on-stage actress, who becomes part-storyteller and
part-dance teacher. One soloist, originally Tharp, begins with a shuffling
and vamping solo while twirling batons (in the form of lustrous, Lucite
wands). Part One, "The Bix Pieces," includes five numbers, some with lyrics
that cue mimetic touches ("She's got eyes of blue...."), which pop out of
the ribbonlike swirl of dancing that pours from one, two, three, and/or four
singular dancers. With the inclusion of a male dancer for the first time in
Tharp's group at the time of creating Bix, the choreography sometimes
involves partnered, couple dancing. Mid-way, in Part Two called "How They
Were Made," the narrator speaks for the choreographer, telling the audience
about the dance it is watching. Tharp's story refers to her past, her
background of theatrical schooling, her father and his world, and leads to a
focus on the musical and physical choices in the dancing at hand. The music,
the narrator informs us, is called Swing and the smooth adagio choreography
making up the dance embraces that notion as a well. After a
lecture/demo-like interlude, in which one or more dancers perform the
individual components of the work's choreographic phrases, Part Three gets
introduced. Now the music is Haydn's, which the narrator informs the
audience, was the music to which Tharp originally composed her choreography
when creating her dance. So, as they then get repeated, familiar
choreographic moves complement the different score as harmoniously as they
mated with Beiderbecke's score. "Once Again" follows, accompanied by "Abide
With Me," as a an encapsulation and recapitulation, "a severe distillation,"
in Tharp's own view, of all the dancing that preceded her closing quintet,
only here the reclaimed movements, with their new timing and reshaping, make
something seemingly new and different out of the already familiar. Or, in
the words of Tharp's text: "Part Three of The Bix Pieces is offered as an
arrangement of Parts One and Two. Nothing new has been added. Much has been
forgotten. And it is all different again."