PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY

The Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Fall Season at the Koch Theater, Lincoln Center offers a window into Taylor’s early and later works, and contemporary choreographers. The evening I attended began and ended with two of his works, framing two world premieres by current choreographers: Lauren Lovette, resident Taylor choreographer, and Jody Sperling of Time Lapse Dance. 

A 1962 work, Aureole, created eight years into the founding of Taylor’s company, was a pleasant opening piece, danced beautifully by five dancers in white (George Tacet, costumer), to music by George Frideric Handel: Concerti Grossi in C, F and Jephtha. The piece stayed on one level, repeating easily anticipated variations, strung in predictable floor patterns. An adagio solo danced by Devon Louis replicated a young Paul Taylor’s early dynamic appearances. 

The stand-out performance of the evening was Jody Sperling’s Vive La Loïe! which raised the question in this viewer’s mind, “Is this dance?” Sperling is a long time re-imaginer of Loïe Fuller’s 19th and 20th century stage dances, which combine fabric, lighting, and illusion to create fleeting and multi faceted images. (In her time, Fuller became the embodiment of the “Art Nouveau” movement as her work was seen as the perfect reciprocity between idea and symbols”).

Jessica Ferretti, stands atop a large grey cube, adorned in a long flowing silk gown, her arms extended by  lightweight poles which allow her to orchestrate the dress using a multitude of upper body movements that flow one into the other…an orchid perhaps, bird in flight, a butterfly, waterfall, wind…constantly evolving as this moving sculpture of a goddess or female heroine plays with our visual imagination. Beautifully lit by David Ferri, the colors of blue, red, yellow, and white, imbue the fabric with shifting luminescence. This is a movement poem suggesting the mystery of the universe. 

Lauren Lovette’s Recess (World Premiere) begins auspiciously, the stage framed on either side with beautiful rainbow-like pastel banners extending front to back; as well a length of pastel colored panels lining the proscenium arch (Set design: Libby Stadstad). Five dancers are lit in silhouette by Brandon Stirling Baker, then come to life as music and more light fill the stage. Provocative music by composer Errollyn Wallen used drumming, cello, and bass to accompany the dance and presumably, Lovette envisioned playful romps based on childhood playground games of hopscotch or red rover as a baseline for the choreography. Sadly, the dancing seemed under rehearsed, choreography commonplace, with no obvious point of view. 

Ending the evening, Paul Taylor’s 1994 Funny Papers, co-choreographed with half a dozen of his former dancers, included costumes by Santo Loquasto– jumpsuits of white and black, varying fronts or backs–perhaps symbolic of newsprint? Taylor dedicated this work to “all those who, before reading the front page news, turn to the funnies first.”  A medley of novelty tunes; “Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?’ being one of them. Again, a piece lacking a point of view, the dancers  performed cornball antics trying much too hard to be funny and entertaining. 

While it is admirable that the Taylor Company is offering a quantity of different works to choose from during this run, the hope is that future performances will portray more gravity.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman