Lovette’s appointment was a leap of faith by Artistic Director Michael Novak, but it has proved to be mostly sound despite a small choreographic output on which to base the decision. I saw Recess, a season premiere by her, which forefronts the playful and upbeat aspects of dance. The opening tableau featured the five dancers in silhouette, arranged in a sculptural human bridge, and surrounded by Libby Stadstad’s ethereal set of multi-colored panels framing the proscenium (and evocative of Adrianne Lobel’s design for Mark Morris’ L’Allegro). The size-graduated panels compressed the vast proscenium space, making the small cast seem larger. Mark Eric’s costumes, elevated takes on athleisure, echoed the colorful set’s hues. Unfortunately, many of the stop-start gestures and exchanges between the dancers didn’t project, even if their competitive, playful, and athletic interactions carried the dance.
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| Jada Pearman, Alex Clayton in Recess. Photo: Whitney Browne |
Vive La Loie!, a tribute to Loie Fuller by Jody Sperling, dazzled in a way that Fuller’s original dances might have. Jessica Ferretti stood atop a tall plinth, draped in swaths of white silky fabric, with long wings guided by flexible poles. She fluttered, swirled, and rippled the fabric to mesmerizing effect; I did not expect to be so riveted. At moments, it recalled a grand-scale Symphonie Fantastique by Basil Twist—fabric given bewitching life. A second Fuller-inspired work by Sperling, Clair de Lune, was performed on another program. Emmy Wildermuth worked on the floor, skimming her wings just above it into eddying cascades and lily-shaped flutes. These certainly piqued interest in a modern dance figure that has been more museum artifact than flesh-and-blood artist.
Several years after Taylor’s death, it might be easy to forget that he made some klunkers. With so many good and great dances by Taylor to choose from, it certainly makes curatorial sense to avoid the lesser ones, some of which may never see a footlight again. But a side effect of seeing highly cherry-picked and curated dances by Taylor, juxtaposed with commissions by less experienced choreographers, can seem unfair to the current generation.
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| Devon Louis in Aureole. Photo: Whitney Browne |
Taylor’s
Aureole (1962) remains one of his early and timeless masterpieces of concision, gentle poetry, and explosive athleticism—a précis of the man himself. Devon Louis danced Taylor's famous solo, a silhouette of which now forms the company's logo. Louis, a very special dancer with the physique of a tight end, moves with a plush grace and delicacy, and leaps so space-eating that he must often rein them in.
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Gabrielle Barnes, John Harnage, Maria Ambrose, Elizabeth Chapa in Funny Papers.
Photo: Whitney Browne |
Funny Papers’ (1994) choreography is now credited to six company members from the original cast, “amended and combined by Paul Taylor.” I don’t recall how it has been billed in the past, but this felt like an admirable elucidation as so often the dancers contribute to the choreography with modest credit. And funny it was indeed, especially the high camp of “I Am Woman” and the dedication of the dancers (especially John Harnage) while thrusting their fists in cheerleader positions and pompous saltes. It’s the kind of piece that might fall flat without absolute buy-ins by the dancers. The audience loved it.
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| Lost, Found and Lost. Photo: Whitney Browne |
Lost, Found and Lost (1982) and The Word (1998) are two other sui generis dances in the company’s rep. The first dance encapsulates ennui with movements normally spied in restroom queues and by water coolers, set to Donald York's symphonic elevator muzak. The dance is elevated by Alex Katz's elegant bedazzled black unitards, veils, and neon jazz shoes and, again, the cast's total commitment to indifference. The Word, by contrast, portrays the insidious and inexorable infection of a virus (danced by the indispensable Madelyn Ho), be it religious or political. Santo Loquasto's prep school uniforms, the same for all, brilliantly encapsulate the brainwashed ranks, who dance as if possessed.
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| The Word. Photo: Ron Thiele |
Back to Robert Battle being welcomed into the fold… he departed abruptly as nine-year artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on the eve of that company’s big City Center season last year. His resurfacing at Taylor makes some lineage sense in that Battle was an important leader and choreographer at David Parsons' company before branching out on his own, where he created some very strong works, including some performed by Ailey. Parsons was once a star at the Taylor company, and so there is some shared movement DNA between the three, if faint. Alicia Graf Mack, once a memorable Ailey company member, will become artistic director at Ailey, another strong limb on that company’s family tree. The two respective trees of Taylor and Ailey now share some roots if they hadn't before.
(Please excuse odd formatting in this post; Blogger is haunted by gremlins...)
