‘Sinatra Dance With Me’ channels The Chairman

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The voice is eternal. We all know that.

But the realization hit Twyla Tharp at a specific moment: hearing a live saxophonist practicing along to Frank Sinatra’s digitally isolated vocals, in an early workshop for her dance tribute to the legend.

"It was very eerie," she recalls. But "the voice had amazing presence. It is a moving thing, obviously, that Sinatra’s greatness transcends his time here on Earth. … Every artist aspires to a kind of immortality, and every human being does as well."

The voice is also universal, to more than one generation. But the man who possessed it was a real person to Tharp and Steve Wynn. Their separate relationships with Sinatra are a common bond in otherwise unrelated careers, now uniting them at Wynn Las Vegas for "Sinatra Dance With Me."

It’s a reworked version of "Come Fly Away," Tharp’s dance musical that ran on Broadway from March through September. A live big band accompanies Sinatra’s vocals (extracted from his recordings) as he becomes singing narrator for four couples whose stories entwine in a nightclub.

The Las Vegas version is shorter at 80 minutes and without intermission, but includes much of the Broadway cast, including its three Tony Award nominees: Karine Plantadit, Keith Roberts and John Selya.

It’s the choreographer’s fourth take on the 20th century’s most famous voice, which is "locked into many decades of my life." Only Brahms has been the source for more of her choreography.

Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov first performed "One More Frank" during her dancing days in 1976. The structural groundwork for the new version was more 1982’s "9 Sinatra Songs," still frequently performed by ballet companies.

Sinatra was "a big fan," Tharp says, and "took curtain calls with us. It was a wonderful kind of inclusive feeling."

Tharp’s musical collaborators range from Talking Heads’ David Byrne on "The Catherine Wheel" to Billy Joel on "Movin’ Out," the 2002 Broadway hit that led to a similar (and less successful) Bob Dylan tribute and the latest pass at Sinatra on Broadway.

Nevada Ballet Theatre, heavily supported by the Wynn family, made Tharp its "Woman of the Year" in a 2008 fundraiser. Steve Wynn says he flew her out on his corporate plane "because I wanted to talk about Las Vegas and have her see what was going on these days," as part of an ongoing quest: trying to creatively fill a void on the Strip between touring concerts and Cirque du Soleil.

Tharp in turn later pitched Wynn on the idea of bringing the other Chairman of the Board home to the Strip. He went to see "Come Fly Away" in New York and came home enthused enough to put up preproduction expenses to restage the work here.

Wynn’s own ties to the singer date back to the early 1980s. Sinatra worked at Wynn’s Golden Nuggets in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, giving Wynn hours of face time with the legend as he ferried him back and forth from Palm Springs by private jet.

Wynn liked Tharp’s work better than a previously pitched multimedia show, which played Radio City Music Hall with videos of Sinatra synced to a live orchestra.

"This is different," he says. "It’s Twyla Tharp artistically interpreting lyrics that Sinatra was interpreting."

"It is the real McCoy," says Tharp, not pausing a rapid-fire conversation as she deliberately quoted "At Long Last Love." "And it’s what we still have, which is the voice.”

Though it shares the same narrative approach as "9 Sinatra Songs," Sinatra’s death in 1998 made it "a completely different kind of venture. Because one had to take into account that he no longer was with us, which was a strange thing at first.

"The narrative is not Sinatra’s life," she notes. "When we do refer to him directly in the show, we do it metaphorically." The focus is still on the young lovers and their romantic complications. "But his presence, his ongoing presence even after passing, is something that resonates with us. And I think that is a real backbone to the evening."

Asked if she remembers Sinatra movies from the drive-in her parents operated in the foothills of San Bernardino, Tharp’s answer probably could be anticipated: "I remember him dancing, the musicals with (Gene) Kelly" (such as ‘On the Town’) … I’ve always watched movement."

But years of pop and rock collaborations indicate a keen ear as well. "There are many channels playing in a song. With Sinatra there’s what I call the emotional subtext of the song, which can be completely contrary to the lyrics. Sinatra can deliver a perfectly innocent song from a lyrical point of view with complete seductive intention."

"Twyla hears Frank treat a line of a song a certain way," Wynn adds. "And Twyla thinks about that because her brain works in movement more than sound." She listens to a lyric and then "does what Frank does. She interprets it herself."

The action onstage circles back to the message of, "Hey everybody, he’s with us," Tharp says.

"I think we’re all a little sentimental about it," she adds of opening the show on the eve of Sinatra’s 95th birthday.

When "Come Fly Away" debuted in Atlanta, Nancy Sinatra told Tharp, "Gee I wish Dad could have been here."

"And I just looked at her and didn’t think about it when I said, ‘Well you know Nancy, he is.’ "

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.