PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY

Review by Noah Witke Mele

This fall the Paul Tayor Dancer Company once again returned to Lincoln Center’s Koch Theater to
present two weeks of wonderfully varied performances. The curtain first rose on Mercuric Tidings, a 1982 work set to Schubert, which found the bright colors of the dancers’ pink costumes flashing across the stage in Taylor’s classic modern-balletic style. Elegant barrel rolls and sharply defined leaps filled the stage with the help of bright smiles plastered onto the performer’s faces.

Intricately patterned lifts and gorgeous floorwork intertwined as the thirteen dancers flitted to and fro from the wings, unifying in the blink of an eye and collapsing into smaller groups just as fast. Each phrase moved their bodies with a swirling intensity, driven by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s swelling strings, at breakneck speed through the virtuosic choreography, causing the few moments of relative stillness to feel all the more grounding. Gently curved spines and lounging bodies brought with them suppleness that rounded out the dance.

Larry Keigwin’s new work Drum Circle began with a droning didgeridoo as the curtain rose on the
dancers. Clad in neon singlets, by costumer William Ivey Long, which highlighted the delightful humor of the dance, they marched in geometric patterns. The vogue-tinged choreography was accompanied by live music by CHAIN (featuring William Catanzaro, Victor See Yeun, and Michael Mustafa Ulmer), whose percussive sounds made a vibrant backdrop for energetic and cascading partnerings and small groups of weaving bodies. Dancer Alex Clayton stood out in bright geen when he soloed with exquisite flair and an air of superstardom hat is more commonly found in a stadium than at Lincoln Center.

The final dance in the program was Esplande, Taylor’s 1975 work set to two of Bach’s violin concertos.
This delicious pastoral contained a number of gorgeous duets, romantic and sometimes humourous, performed simultaneously or in cannon by multiple couples. One such moment featured Jada Pearman stepping delicately onto her partner’s chest, balancing there while he lay across the floor.

In an interlude, the bouncing choreography is replaced with subtler motions, the dancers crawling slowly about the stage through a puddle of warm light, before returning to the jubilant energy with renewed verve. The audience gasped when the dancer’s leaps began to find conclusion in the arms of other dancers and when, upon catching his partner, Lee Duveneck began to spin her body with a near violent momentum.

Altogther, the Paul Taylor Dance Company always leaves its audience wanting more. Their dancing
inspires amazment at its technical prowess, and their commitment to cultivating the work of contemporary choreographers is admirable, especially when paired with the care taking to upkeep a valuable repertoire of Taylor’s dances.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Noah Witke Mele