A Los Altos native will be dancing on acclaimed choreographer Twyla Tharp’s 60th-anniversary tour, which comes to Berkeley in February.
Professional dancer Reed Tankersley, who graduated from Mountain View High School before attending The Juilliard School, will be performing on Tharp’s national tour.
“Working with her is incredible and she’s super technical,” Tankersley said.
Ten years ago, Tankersley danced on Tharp’s 50th anniversary national tour as the youngest member and continued working with the award-winning choreographer for the next four years. Then, in 2019, he was a performer for a Cirque du Soleil tour until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Tharp’s 60th anniversary tour includes 33 dates, with three performances at
Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall Feb. 7-9.
Those performances will be sort of a homecoming for Tankersley, a 2010 graduate of Mountain View High. He was a member of the MVHS Dance Spectrum club and trained at the competitive dance studio Dance Attack! in Los Altos. As a senior, he won the YoungArts scholarship, a prestigious competition for high school artists across America.
Tankersley said his passion for dance stems from both his love for performance and for the movement and physicality of dance compared to other art forms.
“To be able to move and the coordination and things
like that is really something I’m drawn to,” he said. “So much of dancing is rehearsal and it gets a little monotonous. But when you have a performance or do a tour, I love seeing how people who aren’t dancers perceive it and their reaction.”
Tankersley finds the way the troupe is preparing for this tour as “kind of unconventional,” but said Tharp’s choreography is “incredibly smart in how it’s pieced together.”
Tharp is a celebrated choreographer whose style incorporates ballet, contemporary, modern and jazz dance
elements. She has received two Emmys, one Tony Award for Best Choreography and the 2004 National Medal of the Arts.
Tharp’s touring show consists of two works. The
first dance, set to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, has not been performed since 1999. Tankersley described it as
“super technical” and “brilliant.”
“There’s comedy and there’s technique and there’s relationships between the people,” he added.
The second work is a new commission with composer and pianist Philip Glass, which Tankersley said has more of a “jungly feel and raw movement.”
Tankersley said he has evolved a lot as a professional dancer since the last tour.
“I think when you’re younger and starting out, your
body is fresh in a lot of ways. And I think you value the technical aspect of dance a lot more, at least I did, like having to make sure I hit all my moves,” he said. “Whereas now, I’m a lot more interested in the storytelling of it all and evoking emotion from
other people.”
He has also stepped into the production side of the dance world, entrusted with one of Tharp’s ballets last March.
“I went to Alabama by myself to go to work with Alabama Ballet and cast, which I had never done before,” he said. “And it was tough because I hate making people feel bad or choosing who’s the best, but I’ve been going on both sides of the table now.”
None of it would have been possible without the support of his parents, he noted.
“They really encouraged me to do what I wanted to do and not follow a more
traditional route,” Tankersley said. “When you’re graduating high school, focusing on the arts is something that truly is a luxury and a privilege. So I’m really grateful for that.”
His mother, Susie Fasanaro, said one of her proudest moments was when her son was initially selected to be a part of Tharp’s cast 10 years ago. All those years of driving him to classes, rehearsals, competitions and auditions paid off.
“We always supported him and we actively looked for positive, especially male role models in the dance field for him, for him to learn from,” Fasanaro said.
Tickets to Tharp’s tour in Berkeley start at $42. For tickets, visit tinyurl.com/29byh54
