Comedy Central: taking on "something stupid" in Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs.

By the time Garrie Imler, principal dancer with Pacific Northwest Ballet, makes her entrance with Jonathan Poretta in Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs, the audience is ready to laugh. We've already seen the tipsy antics in "One For My Baby," so when this couple stumbles and jitters though the awkwardness of "Something Stupid," we jump on every giggle. The humor is amplified by their pairing--Poretta is a firecracker performer and Imler hardly ever makes a mistake--so each bobbled step and botched transition is like a private joke. With queenly aplomb Imler glides through the mishaps. But in fact, this is her first "funny" role.

"I've never really thought about doing a comedic role--I've never been a stepsister in Cinderella or anything like that," said Imler, who is usually cast in ballerina roles. "So when Shelley Washington (the former Tharp luminary and current ballet mistress for the choreographer), who set Nine Sinatra Songs on the company, said, 'You're not supposed to make it comedic--it should just be that way,' I was surprised. I was supposed to keep a straight face through the whole thing." But for ]ruler there was a fine line between going too far and not doing enough. "Usually I'd do too much, and Shelley would say, 'Take it back a notch--don't try to make it funnier than it is.'"

When Tharp made Nine Sinatra Songs (a collection of duets, from tender to tempestuous, with stops along the way for flashy and humorous) for her own company in 1982, it was yet another transformational moment for her. Taking on the conventions of ballroom dancing and Frank Sinatra's singing was right in line with her continuing interest in popular culture. But it also put her work in an even more accessible light with increasingly larger audiences. The work is in the repertories of several ballet companies and is being performed by five of them in 2006. Imler saw a few excerpts from the American Ballet Theatre video of the short version called Sinatra Suite, with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Elaine Kudo, but didn't have any other exposure to Tharp's work.

Artistic director Peter Boal felt that Imler and Poretta would be a natural pair. "The role fit Carrie and Jonathan's friendship perfectly. I knew they would have a great time with the duet," says Boal. "And she actually has done comedy before--but it's been offstage, not on."

Imler, who trained at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and finished in PNB's own school, wasn't lust new to being funny onstage, but to social dancing as well. Nine Sinatra Songs was her first real brush with "dancing cheek to cheek."

"It was not like anything else I'd done. It wasn't as contemporary as Forsythe, and it certainly wasn't like Balanchine." For Imler, spacing proved to be a challenge. "In ballet [your partner] is there for you, and you don't ever really see him. But in Nine Sinatra Songs you're face to face. You [both] have to figure out how close you need to be to do something or how far away." The heeled shoes were an added threat, but luckily that worked right into the character she was dancing. "It was much easier in flat shoes. When I got the heels, he had to hold me up. There's a lot of jumping into his arms and fast paddle turns where you fall off your heel. I'd roll over on my foot, which made it that much more funny."

With Boal gradually adding new pieces to the company's repertoire, soon Tharp will not be the only choreographer to test Imler in new ways.