Paul Taylor's Ever Lively Dance

In posters and on billboards for each of their Spring seasons, PTDC flies off the page. In person, the they do a similar trick.

Francisco Graciano and Michael Apuzzo in Paul Taylor's "Gossamer Gallants,"
once more on the program on March 29th at 2pm.
Photo by Tom  Caravaglia.

Paul Taylor Dance Company always seems to be in motion, just off and above the stage. Theirs is an energetic force. PTDC is always propelling through air.

The momentum is intellectual as well as physical. A Paul Taylor dance is well-thought out and intelligent.
Taylor, in fact, is a man of many parts-- an author with a nice sense of humor, a dance maker with a great sense of humor, irony, and a vision all his own.

There are 8 performances left to the PTDC Lincoln Center Spring at this writing, and we urge you to catch
at least one of our favorites: tonight at 7pm, "Mercuric Tidings" and "Sunset" are on the bill with "Fibers" and "Troillus and Cressida (reduced)." On Wednesday, March 26th, go see "A Field of Grass." Friday, March 28th at 8pm brings a chance to see the new "American Dreamer," and Saturday at 2pm, "Marathon Cadenzas" premieres again; these are numbers 139 and 140 in the Paul Taylor oeuvre. "Piazzolla Caldera" is  on the final program for this season on Sunday, March 30th at 6pm.

You can purchase tickets and view the schedule here and follow PTDC on FB.

Paul Taylor's most recent book are the essays in "Facts and Fancies" published in 2013.

The Taylor Spring is Here (At Last)

Michelle Fleet and Robert Kleinendorst in "A Field of Grass"  
choreograhped by Paul Taylor, set to songs by
Harry Nilsson with costumes by Santo Loquasto and
lighing by Jennifer Tipton. First performed in 1993.
Photo by Paul B. Goode

It's spring-- at least it is a Paul Taylor Dance Company spring. The weather outside the David H. Koch Theatre at Lincoln Center, where the season lasts from March 11th through 30th, may still be iffy, but you can count on the warmth and good humor of PTDC to welcome you once inside.

Poster for "Airs" by Paul B. Goode.

Paul Taylor's vision is often edgy and a bit cockeyed, but it is always intelligent and interesting. For Paul Taylor, dance is social commentary or sometimes just social observation. He is often caustic, sometimes pointedly so, sometimes more genially. Paul Taylor sets the ordinary askew in his little jewels of invention.
His sharp insight into the human condition was well on display in the weekend programs we saw.

"Gossamer Gallants" took a place as a favorite when it first presented in 2011. This weekend, it had competition from a new work, that is new to me,  "A Field of Grass," first performed in 1993. In the interests of transparency, it is important to reveal that this reviewer has many favorites in the PTDC repertoire-- from "Company B" to the transcendent "Aureole," and on and on. "A Field of Grass" just happens to be a proximate fave.

Photo by Tom Caravaglia.

Leading a hippie circle-- yes it is that kind of grass-- that includes the outstanding Michelle Fleet, Robert Kleinendorst goes from joy to a little bit of a bummer and back again in "A Field of Grass." The lively songs of Harry Nilsson accompany the ensemble, which on this occasion also included the splendid Aileen Roehl, Sean Mahoney, Francisco Graciano, Heather McGinley and Christina Lynch Markham.

Photo by Paul B. Goode

For "Sunset," set to Edward Elgar's Serenade for Strings and Elegy for Strings, the mood is appropriately more elegiac. The cast puts aside its bell bottoms (designed by santo Loquasto for "A Field of Grass") and trades them in for shirtwaists and crisp khakis (set and costumes designed by Alex Katz.)
Both dances are more balletic than we've come to expect from Paul Taylor, and very beautiful to watch. In "Sunset," the men's movements have a Gene Kelly quality.

Photo by Paul B. Goode

"Airs," a classic out of the PTDC repertoire first performed in 1978,  is danced to Handel. It's formality is belied by the the short gowns and leotards worn by the men and their bare chests (costumes by Gene Moore.) On the same bill, "Dust," set to Francis Poulenc's Concert Champetre, is amusing and lively, but the pièce de résistance on this day's program is "Piazzolla Caldera" (1997).

"Piazzolla Caldera" breaks down the tango. There is the tango for one, a solo that seems impossibly sad in the context of this very sexy dance. A same sex tango relies heavily on horseplay and a tango a trois plays up the aggression that is also germaine to the genre.The music is by Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Peterburshaky with costumes by Santo Loquasto.

Going forward into the searon, you can see "Gossamer Gallants" on March 22nd at 8pm with "Sunset" and on March 29th at 2pm with other works. "Piazzolla Caldera" reappears on March 21st at 8pm, and with "Dust" on March 30th at 6pm. "A Field of Grass" is on the program on March 26th at 6pm. and "Airs" repeats on the March 29th performance at 8pm.

For more information on Paul Taylor Dance Company, visit www.ptdc.org. For a schedule of the Spring season, visit the David H. Koch Theatere website.

Dancing In The Spring: Rites of the Season

This is the premiere season of "To Make Crops Grow," a deadly funny character study of modern folk 

embroiled in ancient rites.

It is always an honor and a privilege to witness a Taylor dance performance. The Paul Taylor Dance Company is holding its second spring at the David H. Koch Theatre on the Lincoln Center campus through March 24th.

So many of the pieces Paul Taylor has created elevate our understanding of even simple things to delightful new heights. Among those exciting  and sometimes revelatory experiences, there are the flowing movements of "Cascade,"  a dance he choreographed in 1999 or "Eventide." The latter is a companion piece to Taylor's beautiful new work, "Perpetual Dawn." (See the review of the world premiere here.) Or is it the other way around, since the intimate "Eventide" was created in 1997?

The moody backdrop of a lone tree -with set and costume design by Santo Loquasto-- and Jennifer Tipton's lighting are characters in "Eventide." The dance is set in seven parts to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The exceptionally lovely interlude in "Eventide," Musette was danced by Parisa Khobdeh and Michael Trusnovec at our performance with a wonderful lyricism.  Heather McGinley and Francisco Graciano also made a particularly nice pairing in Moto Perpetuo.

Photo by Tom Caravaglia from Paul Taylor's new "Perpetual Dawn"

The souls writhing in gayly silk robes (the women) or workmen-like overalls (the men), sets and costumes by Alex Katz, present a Hieronymous Bosch-like vision of end times in "Last Look." Donald York composed the music for the Taylor dance, which was first performed in 1985. Mirrors and darkness create a haunting texture for "Last Look."

Story-telling is one of the delights of a Taylor work, and in "To Make Crops Grow," he takes his time to the reveal, riffing along the way on human nature and foibles. "To Make Crops Grow," enjoying its premiere season this year, making it dance number 137 in the Taylor compendium, with music by Ferde Grofe, is tantalizing in its pace.

"Le Sacre Du Printemps (The Rehearsal)" is celebrating the anniversary of the Nijinsky-Stravinsky collaboration that ended in near riot in Paris in 1913. Taylor's take blends humor with brutality, making fun of  Nijinsky's maligned ballet, but not completely abandoning its theme of sacrifice. Amy Young's on-going tantrum of loss is poignantly amusing. The mix of joyful and barbaric, is also seen in "Company B," a personal favorite, where the hope and bounce of the dancing and the songs by the Andrews Sisters contrast with the ugly realities of war.