Paul Taylor Dance Company – The Body is Art

Founded in 1954 by Paul Taylor (1930-2018), The Paul Taylor Dance Company is driven by a belief that “dance can convey complex truths about the human experience.”  Worldwide touring includes an annual appearance at Lincoln Center. All choreography at this presentation is by Paul Taylor.

Images – 1977
Music by Claude Debussy
Margaret Kampmeier – piano

Jessica Ferretti and Company

Taylor choreography has a sense of visual aesthetics in all aspects of stage work. Pauses reveal curated composition. Dance mines every limb for sequential, often unexpected movement. Arms and hands are particularly evocative. This piece begins with a circling group whose clasped hands rise straight up over their heads. Later, with elbows bent, ears or eyes are covered. The feel of an age old religious ceremony pervades.

A single woman or man is vertically lifted at the circle’s center. Around each, the company lays like flat spikes. Floor work is imaginative. Rolling unspools in varied forms. Dancers often exit this way. Everything is fluid and graceful. Bodies fold, extend, spiral, jump, leap. Lines of performers resemble live hieroglyphics. Progression from vertical to knee to floor emerges as if figures were boneless.

Feet planted, a solo woman in a floor length skirt, moves extravagantly only from the waist up. The pas de deux features dancers who circle and reflect but never touch or acknowledge one another creating surreptitious tension. Women lightly prance. Supine bodies are leapt over. Circles reconfigure. Images is powerful; trance-like. 

Costumes by Gene Moore are dissonant, the men’s too modern, the women’s patchwork skirts distracting.

The Word – 1998
For our God is consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29)
Music composed for the dance by David Israel
Tara Simoncic – conductor

The Ensemble

This is a disturbing piece. Its opening sounds gladiatorial. Students (?) are regimented, competitive, driven. Hands often clamp behind backs at military attention. Prayer suggests obeisance. Fists clench. Jumps and bounces are propelled by swinging arms. Acrobatic leaps and somersaults simulate athletic training. Dancers swirl onto the floor as if drilling in. Groups ignore one another.

Moves are sharp, consecutive. A female outsider, ostensibly nude- dances raw and roiled in and out of formations. Is she representative of those murdered?  Which side is she on?  Haunch positioning is oddly animal-like and unnerving. There’s little interaction. She’s lifted once or twice, rigid, upside-down. Music is insistent, dramatic. Marching is straight-legged. Hands lock behind necks. Dancers are expressionless. Arms reach while prostrating. The company files out. One shudders.

Costumes by Santo Loquasto seem a stylized take on young boys drilled into being Nazis. Many dancers are tall. The unisex school uniforms- just right- emphasize youth.  The outsider wears a skin tight body suit effectively colored to look like nudity. Shadows add to ominous atmosphere. (Jennifer Tipton)

Promethean Fire 2002
Fire “that can thy light relume”- William Shakespeare
Music – John Sebastian Bach
Orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski
Tara Simoncic – conductor

Devon Louis and Madelyn Ho

To my mind, this is the least compelling of the three. Music is marvelous, but we get no overall feeling from the dance. It’s as if we watch notes come alive provoking movement. Men and women separate and weave together. Lifts feature bent legs; some are supine. Men escort. Women are literally flipped. Dancers drag each other; pile on one another.

Jennifer Tipton’s lighting is striking.
Costumes by Santo Loquasto are attractive.

Live Music! By Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Guest Artist, Time For Three

In addition to its long time studios on the Lower East Side, in 2025, the Company will open a new midtown headquarters – Taylor Dance West, 307 W 38th Street – to become a greater resource, offering a broader spectrum of dance, fitness, and education programs to support and grow the next generation of dancers, dance lovers, and dance makers. Dancers and administration will be working together starting in January. The new facility has a rehearsal studio for the Company, rehearsal studios for the school, rehearsal space for a renter (to be announced) and administrative offices.

Photos by Whitney Brow
Opening – Images-Elizabeth Chapa, Shawn Lesniak, Gabrielle Barnes, Devon Louis

Paul Taylor Dance Company
Founder – Paul Taylor
Artistic Director – Michael Novak

Through November 24, 2024
David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center