BOSTON. The worlds of modern ballet and stock car racing have rarely, if ever, intersected, but there's always a first time, says Jimmy Ray Haggart, a mechanic at Mel's Auto Service in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. "I don't see anything wrong with it," Haggart muses as he wipes grease from his hands. "You might have to put the yellow caution flag out during a pas de deux, but that's just part of racing."
Twyla Tharp Dancers
If any choreographer could pull it off, it's Twyla Tharp, who often sets her work to unconventional music by contemporary artists such as Billy Joel and Bob Dylan. "That's why we picked her," says NASCAR spokesman Gene Ray Embree," referring to "Crash!", a work that will incorporate dance and high-speed modified stock cars under the NASCAR brand. "She's willing to push the limits, and she agreed to put NASCAR sponsors' decals all over her dancers' bodies."
"Crash!", as choreographed by Tharp.
For her part, Tharp was persuaded to take on the NASCAR project by an unfavorable review of her work "In the Upper Room" that appeared in The Boston Globe. "Perhaps the most exciting part of this otherwise unremarkable performance was the collision between two of Tharp's principal dancers that sent them sprawling to the floor," wrote dance critic Mona Helvig.
A little Balanchine, a little Hooters
"As angry as I was, I took inspiration from that harsh comment," Tharp recalls. "I understand that many people go to stock car races for the crashes, so I said to my dancers, 'Maybe we can get us a piece of that action'," she says, doing her best imitation of the "good ol' boy" accent of a typical race fan.
"I think I just busted a shock."
The work will debut at the Toyota/Save Mart 350 on June 22nd, and Tharp's dancers say they are up to the challenge of working along the backstretch at the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California. "We are known for our fast footwork," says principal dancer Kelsey Salamanca. "We will need it to get out of the way of Kurt Busch's Dodge Charger, because it is sponsored by Miller Lite."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
