But they lack the articulate torsos of modern dancers, and when Tharp assigns them deliberately rough and raw attacks--her closest approximation of modernism--they haven't the weight to make it matter.
When the alto Vann Johnson emerged upstage, doing her best approximation of Whitney Houston, the song, "Love Is All," peaked in a blur of evocations.
By tiny increments, I edged her into some approximation of the "Routine for a 6-7-month-old".
Brawlers finds him reeling through his approximation of party music, while Bawlers locates his softer spots.
Once she resembles an approximation of her younger self, however, her spirits soar.
Julia found an old can of paint, left over from the last time she and Teddy had done the walls, and, like the Mexican graffiti-coverer, she found herself tracing atop the markings, moving her arm in an approximation of what the intruders had done, following the devious twists with her own brush.
Even Kate Bush – perhaps the most apposite comparison, given Divers' preponderance of songs on which Newsom twists her voice into an approximation of the shriekier moments on The Kick Inside – gently poked fun at her more indefatigable devotees on How to Be Invisible, mocking up a spell to make herself vanish that included "hem of anorak".
The author's figurative language is consistently satisfying -- a widow's halfhearted approximation of her old blondness can be counted "more an aide-mémoire than a hair-coloring" -- and sometimes it's downright smashing.
But if you want to try an approximation of her sweeter version, just swap butter for olive oil, and leave out the rosemary from the dough (though you can still sprinkle some rosemary on top before baking).
The tone of the programme is the perfect approximation of her standup, which flits dizzyingly from subject to subject without pause, often starting with tense descriptions of her mental-health issues before careering off into a kaleidoscopic nightmare of free-associated thoughts and abstract voices.
