Paul Taylor Dance Company: Legend in the Flesh
Bass Concert Hall, Nov. 16
Ah, the body in motion. The arch of a back, the turn of a wrist, the sweep of an arm can be hypnotic, even reverential; man has known this from the time ritual was born. Legendary choreographer Paul Taylor knows something about the potency of human movement. During his lifetime, he has received three Guggenheim Fellowships, honorary doctorates from seven learning institutions (including Juilliard), a Kennedy Center Honors award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (also known as the “genius award”) for his accomplishments in the medium. On Nov. 16, Austinites had the opportunity to glimpse the work of this 72-year-old master and to marvel at the remarkable team of dancers that he has assembled to coax his vision to life. The concert’s first act, Images, featured dancers in subtly mythological costumes: earth-toned flowing skirts, bare male chests, garlands. They moved in an odd, angular, iconic, left-to-right fashion, as if they had just stepped from ancient shards of pottery to move across the stage. For some pieces, dancers would take on attributes of animals, as in the witty Totem Birds and the intensely athletic, virile Totem Horses; even in these dances, though, a primitive linear quality persisted.
The next act, Black Tuesday, featured original recordings from the Great Depression and dark-toned, hard-luck, 1930s costumes. Here the choreography was more literal, introducing characters like the knocked-up neighborhood gal “Sittin’ on a Rubbish Can” and the arrogant pimp demanding of his stable, “Are You Making Any Money?” Though technically beautiful, Taylor’s choreography in this act was traditional and accessible, demonstrating few of the experimental qualities that helped make his name in the Fifties and Sixties.
The final act proved less conventional. In Promethean Fire, created this year, Taylor wielded bodies in striking black striped leotards as if he were a chemist and they were atoms under the influence of alternating flame and ice. In one moment, the dancers would become a rushing current of random human chaos; in the next, they would suddenly resolve into tight, focused, symmetrical order. Taylor’s choreography — and the dancers’ supreme skill — molded intricate, enthralling shapes into the space of the stage. It was a stunning way to end the evening.
Throughout the concert, I was struck not only by the company’s ability to move together like one organism, but also by the grace of individual dancers. In the second act, Annamaria Mazzini’s solo to the torch song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” contained all the ragged pathos of a woman reduced to shame by hunger and longing. The standout moment of the evening for me, though, occurred in another solo. In Oracle, dancer Amy Young, legs rooted to the stage, enacted a violent, pleading hootchy-kootchy seizure of passions in which her gestures seemed to be controlling her in jerks and starts. It was a satisfyingly disturbing interlude in an otherwise smoothly beautiful, technically perfect evening.
This article appears in November 22 • 2002.