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Top Drawer Taylor

"Arabesque," "Nightshade," "Promethean Fire"
Paul Taylor Dance Company
City Center
New York, NY
March 18, 2006

by Leigh Witchel
copyright 2006 by Leigh Witchel

Seven years after its premiere, “Arabesque” is still one of Paul Taylor’s most delicious dances. It’s also the best dance I’ve seen to Debussy’s music, which sensual as it is, is still not dansante.  “Arabesque” is a dance for four men and four women, though not quite four couples. Pairings occur, but one woman or man is thrown out from the symmetry to dance solo against the three other couples that form a frieze-like background. French composers like Debussy or Rameau can be a trap; the music is very appealing but can be too regular or thin in structure to hold choreography. Taylor had this problem earlier this season with the Strauss orchestrations of François Couperin in “Spring Rounds”. 

While “Spring Rounds” went along with the agreeable charm of the music and was comparatively weak, “Arabesque” is a tangy counterpoint to Debussy’s creamy score. Amidst the dreamy landscape strange things happen. The dancers hold their arms loosely aloft in a common Taylor position, with the wrist bent and the hands like feelers. They race in and out and pursue each other on diagonals or recline while their partners pose over them. And one man and one woman (Michael Trusnovec and Heather Berest) are “blinded” by each other at the beginning and the end of the dance. Berest also has an additional solo to “Syrinx” that further pushes the elegant legato mood to something wilder. Taylor’s deepest connection to the music is through Orientalism. Both he and Debussy are exploring the fantasies in Western minds of the exotic, mysterious and imaginary East. The company is dancing at top form this season; everyone in the cast looked good but the dance is, as it has been for years, Trusnovec’s.

A Victorian woman raises the arm of another woman to test for signs of life. The arm falls limp to the floor. This scene gets repeated over and over again in “Nightshade”.  It’s one of Taylor’s inscrutable pieces, ghastly or deadpan satire depending on the day and your point of view.   

On a shadowy stage with tinny Scriabin piano pieces playing in the background, the work takes clichés from a hundred silent movies and gothic novels, chops them up and strings them back together. There is a little girl in sausage curls, a disheveled damsel in distress and a Jekyll and Hyde figure. If there’s a meaning, it seems to be the one common to many Taylor pieces, and implicit in Stevenson’s novel as well: the veneer of civilization is a very thin one.

To those who think of “Fantasia” as schlock, the Stokowski arrangements of Bach give all the wrong clues to “Promethean Fire”.  We’re waiting for some acknowledgement of the bombast; there is none. Taylor uses the music completely with irony; its massive scale is exactly what he has in mind. The smoky, dark dance suggests several grand themes, as the title suggests, creation is the greatest of them. This is another dance that now belongs to Trusnovec along with Lisa Viola. Taylor lists his dancers in the program in order of seniority.  Trusnovec joined the company in 1998; he’s now worked his way close to the top of the heap and he’s close to the peak of his abilities as well. He exemplifies the best of what this generation has to offer dance. We aren’t a subtle generation, nor are we a gentle one. What grace and elegance we find doesn’t spring from these qualities.  We’re about energy and intensity. Like Wendy Whelan, who typifies a similar stance in ballet, Trusnovec has an ethos of burning commitment to the movement. It’s intelligent, not wildly misdirected or thoughtless. As is inevitable, dancers climb to the top of the pile of names in the company roster and then they drop off. This year we’re losing number three, Heather Berest. Trusnovec is number four; we’ll miss him powerfully when he goes.  Until then, he has one blessing Whelan never did. Paul Taylor is still rehearsing him and making dances. 

Photo: Michael Trusnovec in "Arabesque." Photo: Lois Greenfield.

Volume 4, No. 11
March 20, 2006
copyright ©2006 Leigh Witchel
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last updated on March 20, 2006