Paul Taylor Dance Company Review
November 12, 2024 | David H. Koch Theater – New York, NY, USA
“That was so weird—I loved it,” I whispered to my companion as the curtain fell at the Koch Theater. I live to be surprised at live performances, especially in dance which can be susceptible to formulaic approaches.
And Paul Taylor Dance Company delivered, making an unremarkable Tuesday remarkable. If there’s anything to take away from NYC’s fall dance season, it should be this: don’t sleep on Paul Taylor Dance Company.
During a three-week season at Lincoln Center, the company will have performed twenty works – ten by the company’s namesake – and four of the remaining ten will be world premieres.
Taylor’s work is understandably the backbone of the company and the dancers’ bread and butter, which is not to say they can’t do other styles (they do, and successfully) but who better to embrace the choreographer’s generous physicality? And in what better work than Aureole?
Paul Taylor Dance Company Review
Originally premiered in 1962, the plotless yet lively piece set to baroque music by George Handel solidified Taylor’s mark as a dance maker. And it’s easy to see why. While the polite notes could temper the tone, in Aureole it heightens the work’s rigid and buoyant movements.
Dancers in flouncy white outfits by George Tacet fly across the stage in magnificent sweeping motions, arms windshield-wiping across their frontal planes. In fact, the entire work operates in linear almost two-dimensional planes, dancers sweeping from one side of the stage to the other with incredible bouncing jumps and slides.
Movements are very square, concentrated, and straight-forward - everything slices mechanically, until the levelness breaks with a solo by Devon Louis.
His arms rise in a circle overhead and as he twists, they curl away from each other. The spiraling is luscious, and Louis’ pensive approach is so delicate that even when his eyes cast down his shoulder, the flatness of the work breaks with him.
It’s a beautiful reprieve to a powerfully kinetic piece.
Named resident choreographer in 2022, Lauren Lovette’s work Chaconne in Winter brought a live band, Time for Three, who played a melodic strings arrangement of Bach and Justin Vernon, to the stage.
The two dancers, wearing sparkling nude unitards designed by Mark Eric, twinkled with every spin (fortunately, there was a lot of turning). My companion said it reminded her of ice skaters and a peek at the program afterwards happily solidified that thought – Lovette was inspired by snowflakes swirling around each other.
Culminating in a frenzy of floor spins, tuck rolls, and exuberant sissonne jumps, beautifully danced by Madelyn Ho and John Harnage, they emulated rippling wind blowing across a fresh snowbank. Although the ending lost some of that excitement with the dancers exiting separate wings, that is much like the end of a snowstorm: the flakes simply land, their fleeting flight complete.
What is most impressive about Lovette’s work is that you see her distinctive style of movement infused in the steps: wide stances, generous reaching.
She knows what it means to move which makes for a good pairing with the courageous PTDC dancers.
Taylor was known for pushing the boundaries of movement, even notoriously exploring the absence of movement in his Seven New Dances which received an unforgettable review “made up of three inches of blank space,” according to the PTDC website.
Lost, Found and Lost has echoes of that experimentation; for instance, a group of dancers poses as if to begin dancing only to disassemble and move elsewhere. Mostly, it’s pedestrian and sculptural – the opposite of his kinesthetic works and yet brilliant.
The blank faces of the dancers and almost Hollywood-gone-wrong outfits designed by Alex Katz (sheer fascinator head scarves and black unitards with provocative crystal splatters, complete with mismatched shoes) enhance the utter kookiness of Taylor’s world. And, yes, there is silliness.
Like the people waiting in line with hands on hips, akin to a busy day at the post office, or the dancer peering under their shoe, as if the source of a dinging bell might somehow be underfoot.
But there’s also incredible movement texture which builds tension.
The airy moments containing long pauses are thoughtful and the ones stacked with step after step are cramped and fuzzy.
There’s a reservedness to it too, as if Tayor has drawn an invisible line somewhere that the dancers all know not to cross. It’s this line that helps contain that brilliance and what makes the kitschy parts unkitschy and its relatable parts relatable.
Larry Keigwin’s Rush Hour made for a pleasing bookend to the evening, not only because it felt like a rush but because it harked back to Aureole’s horizontal, sweeping structure, kicked up a notch.
Opting for the removal of wings, dancers were able to run full speed, no brakes, past the vertical light booms into the abyss of stage right and left. Where Aureole bounced, Rush Hour was a hit and run.
At the urgence of Adam Crystal’s pressing score, dancers collided into each other’s stomachs, stag leaped out of the foggy depths of upstage, and dragged each other by the wrist across a stark, gridded floor. The bubbly dancers from earlier in the evening were replaced by people on a bleak mission, emulated in Fritz Masten’s saturated grey and black costumes.
And Keigwin’s construction of chaotic traffic patterns and pulsing celestial knots of limbs helped retain an organic, not overdone mood. Infused with danger (were the dancers running toward or away from something?), it takes a gutsy dancer to go full force in Keigwin’s battleground of a dance.
Luckily, PTDC is chock full of fearless movers.
Featured Photo of Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Madelyn Ho and John Harnage with Time for Three’s Ranaan Meyer in Lauren Lovette’s Chaconne In Winter. Photo by Whitney Browne.
