Paul Taylor Dance Company Review: Company B and Esplanade
October 8, 2021 | Eisenhower Theater at The Kennedy Center
Emerging talent met a welcoming, packed house at Washington, DC’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Eisenhower Theater on Friday, October 8, the second in a four-performance run by the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
Due to on-going Covid-19 restrictions, two instead of the traditional three ballets were performed—1991’s Company B followed by 1975’s Esplanade. If modern dance is meant to share social commentary with innovative movement, the performance was a success for the company, founded in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1954.
Several in the crowd wondered if the force and pace long associated with the company would emerge from the pandemic hiatus and continue under the direction of Michael Novak, the leader who assumed the role at Taylor’s own choosing before the founder’s death in 2018. After the show, the same on-lookers agreed that the essence of the Company charges on, following the aggressive and physical interpretations of both performances.
Soft colors and muted blues set the stage for the postmodern dichotomy that is Company B. Off to a slow start with some missed opportunities for collaboration in the troupe’s early circular movements, the thirteen dancers soon settled into the moves and the message of this World War II-era Americana retrospect. The ballet highlights the harsh juxtapositions of the urgency for love and permanence against the backdrop of young lives lost in complicated cacophonies of war and socio-economic issues.
Throughout the performance, nowhere was the company’s potential for precision more realized than through the male dancers executing the recurring shadowed soldiers marching in symmetry and union against a backdrop of mirth and big movements. The disciplined execution of this repeated trope made the culmination of loss grow and simmer throughout Taylor’s choreography over the nine Andrews Sisters songs.
Alex Clayton’s “Tico-Tico” reminded audiences what Taylor first saw in this dancer when he created a solo for Clayton in 2017’s Concertiana. Clayton’s footwork prowess suits staccato, and his ability to weave a story of mixed genres allows him to be a ribbon in one moment, a burst of adroit, concise actions in the next.
Lee Duveneck’s lead performance in “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!” was crisp and powerful and innocent, highlighting not only his height but the effective teamwork of the female dancers who fit gingerly around him.
But perhaps the most complete performance among the male dancers was given by Miami native John Harnage, company member since 2018. He was a consummate performer -classical dancer, modern athlete, and lean, sinewy stylist who reminded the audience that technique really matters. He was the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B).”
Lisa Borres was a vibrant and engaged lead in the popular “Rum and Coca-Cola,” highlighting the clever red lining in her skirt with accurate footwork and disciplined upper leg control.
Maria Ambrose showed promise alongside Devon Louis in “There Will Never Be Another You” as her teacher, Constance Dinapoli, looked on from Row O in the Orchestra section. You may remember Dinapoli as a member of Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1986 to 1993. She was the original female lead in “There Will Never Be Another You.” Ambrose is a former student of Dinapoli’s. The two were able to collaborate during Zoom sessions to harness the intended meaning behind the potent pas de deux that ends with her soldier facing his fate – war.
At intermission, almost the entire audience left the auditorium. The outside terrace area was unusually full until the last curtain call for the second ballet, Esplanade, with patrons pulling off their masks and many imagining what Esplanade would deliver. Masks back on, all seats filled once again, with several audience members snapping photos of the curtain as it rose, the violins began, and the stage erupted with color and feverish, frenetic movement.
Pops of purple, pink and coral dotted the primarily orange palate of costuming – costuming that was natural and successful in both pieces – setting a tone alongside Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major and Double Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor (Largo and Allegro).
The complete staging evoked the power of shared movement and life in public places, as Taylor had intended. The audience had clearly missed such sharing on a public stage, and the dancers responded, offering a powerful opening to the second half that was much more controlled and precise than Company B.
The joy of Taylor’s signature ‘found movements’ was replete in the company’s partnership and pace in this now classic modern dance composition first inspired, so the story goes, by a girl running to catch a bus. Following the mire of quarantine and social and political unrest, nine dancers helped the audience to laugh and smile and explore in ways as fresh today as they were in 1975.
Ideas of gender and challenging normative standards were bright and current. As the other five female dancers donned dresses, Christina Lynch Markham wore light, form-fitting pants while anchoring several passes and partnerships around her tall, stoic stance. Her anchor served as a vivid reminder that Paul Taylor choreography takes up space and inverts expectations of intersections between dancers and traditional, classical ballet roles.
Powerful pas de deux inversions were exciting and controlled throughout this Esplanade. Overall, the dancers were comfortable and, when in multiple pairings, were in unison. The lifts were exciting and, overall, well sustained. Cavaliers on the ground, ballerinas adroit and strong and angled as outward extensions in a unison of form – for this reviewer, that’s where the real talent and control conveyed.
This ballet is a masterpiece of stylized walking and running and motion that defines modern ballet with the requirement that dancers never lose connection with the floor. These dancers were aware of that necessity, maintaining it even through the longing gazes that drive the stories. Those gazes solidify connection via chance meetings through motion in public spaces and connect the audience to the shared human condition.
What a perfect message for a masked audience required to show proof of vaccination for admission. And what perfect counters, these two works highlighting the form of Taylor’s vision in Esplanade after opening with the nostalgic, haunting social study of Company B. The stories in both ballets served as excellent bookends of loss and hope to initiate the Center’s much-anticipated opening.
Time and training and playing to live audiences can only bolster the authentic care for the craft that these dancers brought to The Kennedy Center’s reopening. Finding the tickets and time for any upcoming Paul Taylor Dance Company performance is well worth the effort, as good times and growth seem clearly on the horizon for upcoming performances of the company’s canon.
Featured Photo for this Paul Taylor Dance Company review of Jada Pearman in Paul Taylor’s Esplanade. Photo by Steven Pisano.
