Rite
of Spring
"Klezmerbluegrass,"
"Syzygy," "Esplanade"
Paul Taylor Dance Company
New York City Center
March 1, 2005
by
Nancy Dalva
copyright
©2005 by Nancy Dalva
Hot
diggity dog! The Paul Taylor Dance Company is back in town and spring
has arrived, the snow on the ground and the date on the calendar notwithstanding.
This is how we celebrate the end of winter every year here, lucky us,
slogging into the theater and skipping out, thinking "Wow, what a
choreographer! What dances! What dancers!" And so it is this year,
the 50th anniversary of the company, with three weeks plush with dances,
and Taylor in the house.
Lucky us again! On opening night we got to thank him in person, though
Taylor does not take the solo bows he used to take, when the curtain fell
on the company and rose on him, so handsome in his blue suit, smiling
from center stage. These days, he bows among his dancers, and as they
move forward towards us, he stands back, applauding just as we are. This
is a potent exchange, exactly duplicating what has just transpired. Taylor,
looking at us. Us, looking at Taylor. With the choreography the medium,
the mirror, the common ground between us. On this festive occasion, the
choreographer was wearing black tie. So although the entire evening had
been pleasurable—more about that in a moment—the bows were
especially so. How grand to see Paul Taylor, looking for all the world
like Clark Gable, so fabulous, so swoon-worthy. And yet so modest. What
a dreamboat that man is, in every sense of the word you can conjure.
The program opened with a weird assignment the choreographer fulfilled
with his usual wit and aplomb. "Klezmerbluegrass" was commissioned
by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture to "celebrate 350 years
of Jewish life in America, where Jews have long been part of the fabric
of the nation's cultural life." There is a long
list of additional supporters, to whom one is also grateful, while nonetheless
wondering, What's next? (Are we going to be in for a spate of donor-dictated
theme art in America? Oh well, I suppose it is no different from commissioning
a portrait, or a tomb, or a chapel ceiling.)
Taylor is no Woody Allen—in fact he seems to be an incredibly unlikely
choice for such an assignment, but he pulls it off—of course—by
cleaving to the improbable score, itself a weird marriage of, say, Minsk
and Appalachia. Margo Leverett (who arranges the music) and the Klezmer
Mountain Boys were live in the pit for the evening. I've always found
that a little Klezmer music goes a long way, and the novelty here might
have worn thin were I not so intrigued by Taylor's response. Bluegrass
is sometimes called "the classical music of folk," and it is
that aspect of the music to which Taylor responded, with classical devices
of his own—the structures of square dancing, strongly formal. On
top he layered schmaltz, and some jokes, in episodes taking one from something
like a Sephardic seraglio ("Lonesome Moonlight Waltz and Volich")
to a farm scene—no, really, Michael Trusnovic mimed milking and
Julie Tice did a chicken dance ("Leather Britches"). Taylor's
company is multi-ethnic, involving a Hawaiian, an Asian Jamaican, a Portuguese,
an Iranian raised in Texas, and an assorted bunch of mainlanders. The
ethnic specifics of this dance are thus instantly Taylorized—like
everything Taylor, it is larger than its facts.
Donald York was in the pit to conduct his score for "Syzygy,"
first performed in 1987, and one of Taylor's several dances that is a
Rite of Spring—more so, even, that his actual "Rite of Spring,"
to the two-piano reduction of the Stravinsky score. York's plush orchestration
much more closely mimics the effect on the audience of the pulsing full
throated chords of the full "Rite, " which he quotes. The choreographer's
other rites include "Diggity," a doggy spring; "Cloven
Kingdom," a prom; and "Sunset," a spring evening in wartime,
all wonderful. But this is such a dazzler—a spangly, jangling rite—the
spring as the planets celebrate it, star-crossed and shimmering, the purest,
coolest orgy ever.
To experience the dance with the composer in the pit is a pleasure one
used to take for granted. Taylor has long compensated for the demise of
live music as a given by selecting vintage recordings for his choreography
that have unique identities—the Andrews Sisters, for instance, or
Stowkoski conducting his own orchestral arrangement. It's a ploy that
has worked well, but to have the Orchestra of St. Luke and Donald York—they
stayed for the last number—in the pit is to realize what we've been
missing.
The program concluded with "Esplanade," now thirty years old,
and as fresh as next week. For those who know it, its many pleasures reside
in seeing how it is danced. For those who are new, what happens—running,
falling, leaps across the stage into stalwart arms!—is still marvelously
surprising, or so I am told. My, how time flies! How many wonderful, wonderful
dancers I have seen in "Esplanade," among them this fine cast
of nine. By seniority in the company they were Patrick Corbin, winding
down his career with fewer performances imbued with the finest stagecraft;
Lisa Viola, that slapstick tragedienne; Heather Berest, so elegant; Michael
Trusnovec, a dancer of astounding gifts and accomplishment, at the peak
of his power...and so down the list. But all you others—the ones
who have danced and gone—I saw you, too, all dancing at the same
time.. Just as sitting in my seat, I was all the selves I've ever been,
seeing "Esplanade." And in the moment, for the moment, in the
here and now, I was happy, for a time, about life itself. Paul Taylor
doesn't need a critic to clarify his work, to intensify his meanings,
or to enlarge the pleasure one takes in seeing his dances. It's fun, but
redundant. We don't have to try to understand Paul Taylor. Paul Taylor
understands us.
Volume 3,
No. 10
March 7, 2005
copyright
©2005
Nancy Dalva
www.danceviewtimes.com
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