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Twyla Tharp takes making dances very seriously but, at 82, she appears to be having some fun with it \u2014 and even poking fun at herself, lightly, in the process. Her new ensemble work, \u201cThe Ballet Master,\u201d which had its premiere on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater<\/a>, depicts a choreographer immersed in the tortured and revelatory journey of bringing a work to life.<\/p>\n That boisterous ballet closes a program that shows three sides of Tharp, beginning with the punchy \u201cOcean\u2019s Motion\u201d (1975) and continuing with \u201cBrel,\u201d an introspective new solo for the American Ballet Theater principal Herman Cornejo. (The New York City Ballet principal Daniel Ulbricht performs it on alternate nights.) While \u201cThe Ballet Master\u201d concerns itself with the choreographer\u2019s inner world, \u201cBrel\u201d zooms in on the dancer\u2019s.<\/p>\n Before any contemporary self-reflection, though, Tharp takes us back to where she\u2019s been. \u201cOcean\u2019s Motion,\u201d to a compilation of 1950s and \u201960s Chuck Berry songs, feels resolutely of its time and quintessentially Tharp, with its brew of ballet and social dance idioms. Its five fabulous dancers \u2014 in short shorts, tight pants and a lot of hot pink \u2014 are like a clique of teenagers on the prowl for a good time. They seem less interested in one another (early on, Miriam Gittens sassily brushes Jake Tribus aside) than in the promise of something beyond their closed world, wired with the energy that the music sends surging through their limbs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n With sunny tracks like \u201cAlmost Grown\u201d and \u201cSchool Days\u201d as their motor, feet swivel, shoulders shudder, hips circle and thrust. A time capsule in some respects, the work plants itself in the present thanks to the high-wattage performances of the cast: Daisy Jacobson, Skye Mattox, Reed Tankersley, Gittens and Tribus. The women, especially, volley between a kind of sultry melting and hard-edged snap with uncanny precision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It must be said plainly in 2024 that the jazz and social dance influence in Tharp\u2019s work is, at its root, a Black American influence. Indebted as she is to Black music and dance lineages<\/a>, it would be nice to see a more open acknowledgment of these sources \u2014 and more than one Black dancer (the phenomenal Gittens) in her current troupe.<\/p>\n