This self-contained concentration on Frank Sinatra songs follows Tharp's
previous, grander scaled Nine Sinatra Songs. Drawing partly on the moods and
moves from the enormously popular former work, as well as from the more
intimate Once More Frank, Tharp fashioned a two-dancer, single-couple
showcase with its very own emotion and distinction. Each of the five songs
selected here had been previously choreographed, but working here especially
for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Elaine Kudo, she honed in on a differently
emotional portrait. Now the songs reveal facets of the same twosome, rather
than characterizing different couples. The ballroom dancing dynamics remain
Tharp's own, as well as those tinged with the mimetics of the dance's
dramatic themes. In Tharp's view the dancing runs the gamut of showing
infatuation ("Strangers in the Night"), through cynicism and resignation, and
to revealing the difficulties and abrasiveness that might well follow
("That's Life). "My Way" comes with it suggestion of a relationship's
anniversaries. The bottom line, after the woman has exited, is the
bitter-sweet one of being left all alone. The suite ends with something that
appears nowhere else in the Tharp/Sinatra canon: a solo. Here, it's for the
man--melancholy, introspective, bereft, at once searching and lost amid the
skidding, turning and jumping that he does to find and/or escape himself.