Notes on PTDC's 59th Season

Eran Bugge and James Samson in 3 Epitaphs. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Notes on the 2013 Taylor season, in the books, comprising 21 dances in 3 weeks at the Koch Theater, where it apparently far surpassed last year's attendance. The process of collaboration seemed more important than ever, particularly the designs of Alex Katz, lit by Jennifer Tipton.

Strongest impressions:

• Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal): the perfect mix of styles both serious and playful; substance; and technique.
• Lost, Found and Lost: ennui + elevator music, with a vocabulary built on boredom, to brilliant, coma-inducing effect.
• Beloved Renegade (2008): perennially sublime, with crystalline performances by Michael Trusnovec, Laura Halzack, and Amy Young; on my Top 5 PT list.
• 3 Epitaphs: the best Neanderthal dance ever, and casting the 2 most lyrical women (Halzack and Heather McGinley) is hilarious, alongside the quintessentially graceful James Samson, Eran Bugge, and Francisco Graciano.
• Cascade: some simple, sublime moments of tenderness between Trusnovec and Michelle Fleet, as when their outheld arms cross. 
• Promethean Fire: the epitome of high classicism and conveying emotion through form and minimal gesture. Parisa Kobdeh shows her noble, serious side alongside Trusnovec; Samson/Young duet is affecting when they pull powerfully against one another.
• Scudorama: suits, fruit-hued unitards, mysterious blanket monsters, and sanctimony add up to a sort of Cold War, modern dance hyper-Americanism. Sean Mahoney's best role.
• Last Look: if all darkness and edges, an important collaboration in the season, with major contributions by Alex Katz's disco-house-of-horrors designs. Trusnovec's otherworldly fluidity in his Jamie Rae Walker-leaping solo underscores his utter confusion.
• Speaking in Tongues: a terrifying star turn by Trusnovec, who could easily brainwash us if he so desired.

Michael Trusnovec and Laura Halzack in Beloved Renegade. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Premieres:

• Perpetual Dawn: a lovely, romantic, serious work; the Loquasto backdrop and costumes and Tipton lighting are key to the aromatic pastoral quality
• To Make Crops Grow: another strange, memorable entry into Taylor's movement theater canon

Enduring:

• Esplanade: have stronger choreographic bones ever been made?
• Company B: easy to take for granted as it is a constant on NY stages, but perfectly captures that era in American history, and the tension between daily joys and war 
• Junction: quirky, formal, quiet, with musical hijinks
• Musical Offering: an in-depth study of a specific vocabulary, patterning, and musicality
• Brandenburgs: a solid gem with the peculiar equation of 5 women, 3 men

Containing rediscovered gems:

• The Uncommitted: remarkable invention in entrances/exits and fleeting melancholy 
• Offenbach Overtures: another sui generis work within Taylor's oeuvre, high comedy and a distinctive visual scheme by Loquasto/Tipton. Khobdeh hilarious.

Graciano, Khobdeh, and Trusnovec fly in The Uncommitted. Photo: Paul B. Goode

The Company:

• While there is no ranking system within the company, a good deal of emphasis is placed on tenure. "Survival of the fittest" applies here, so the longer you remain (and stay healthy), the more you are cast, and prominently. 
• I've run out of words to praise Trusnovec, the finest interpreter of Taylor since I've been seriously watching the company. 
• Kobdeh is daring, funny, foxy, and deeply dramatic.
• Samson, due to his size, is often typecast, but he makes the most of these paternalistic male roles, imbuing them with a kindness and amplitude, and overturning expectations with his stealthy grace
• On the flip side, Graciano is also typecast in many young roles (in fact, he plays Samson's son on more than one occasion), but can dazzle with verve
• Young, a consistent, lyrical, ideal presence, assumes many of the Amazon or independent women's roles
• McGinley not only has balletic qualities, her natural radiance consistently draws the eye
• When Halzack first joined, it is understandable why Taylor became enamored of her lovely leg extensions; they're almost like a timestamp on his choreography (see Beloved Renegade, The Uncommitted). Her private quality give her an aloofness that is a robust tonic to many of the company's extroverts.
• Eran Bugge, if she were in baseball, could be described as a "five tool player." (A good thing.)
• Michael Novak has a refinement and physique that will serve him well at PTDC.
• George Smallwood, new guy with a long resume, brings winking charm, earthiness, and Broadway chops
• Jamie Rae Walker's adds lightness, lucidity, and precision

The season was another impressive demonstration of the depth and totality of Taylor's output, and the incredible physical and mental capabilities of his company and organization. Onto the 60th.

Katz, York, Tipton, and Taylor—Timeless Collaborators

Lost, Found and Lost. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Katz, York, Tipton, and Taylor. It's not a law firm, but they have defined some reliable rules about making good dances together. I caught some during the second week of Taylor's spring season that runs through March 24. 

Lost, Found and Lost was created in 1982, but its inspiration came from material for Events 1 of 7 New Dances originally done in 1957. What's 25 or 31 years between inspirations when you're Paul Taylor? It's an appealing concept—use non-dance movement such as poses and expressions of ennui, set to elevator music by Donald York—but can it live up to its promise? It far exceeds it, aided in no small part by Alex Katz's swanky, humorously bedazzled black unitards, mesh half-veils, and one colorful shoe for each of the 10 dancers, set crisply against a vacuum of a white, augmented by Jennifer Tipton's vanilla ice cream bath.

Apart from James Samson and Parisa Kobdeh, who are at first situated like energetic poles up and down-centerstage, the dancers stand in contraposto, weight poured into one hip which supports a propped fist. Arms fold, heads droop, posture caves. The dancers walk as if going from the kitchen to the couch, and then lie down like they're watching tv. They bumble and shuffle into a neat line, and you think, aha! He's finally getting to the structured part of the dance! But then they pivot diagonally upstage to stand not just in line but on a line, probably at the DMV from their attitude, peeling off one at a time as York's soaring Muzak medley fills the air. 

Last Look. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Katz, York, and Tipton collaborated with Taylor on another revival performed last week: Last Look, from 1985. Like Lost, Found and Lost, it's another dance that demonstrates the importance of each element. Katz created a forest of mirrors, lit in shades of gloom by Tipton. He dressed the dancers (whom we first see in a big old pile) in louche, disco era, sherbet-hued satins accessorized with rhinestone bracelets and foot jewelry. To York's frenetic score, hey shake, bounce, and careen around, not connecting despite trying. Are they celebrating, or grieving? Michael Trusnovec stares in the mirror, seemingly horrified at what he sees, yet unable to tear himself away despite trying.  

These two 80s dances capture that moment of decadence and debauchery without feeling the least bit dated. Taylor has the gift of making dances that are timeless no matter what era they're depicting. 

Taylor—Enduring Romance, Sacrifice, and Oddities

Michael Trusnovec and Laura Halzack in Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal). Photo: Paul B. Goode

Was it a stroke of clever programming or serendipity that paired Paul Taylor's premiere of To Make Crops Grow back-to-back with Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal) (1980) on March 8? Sacre is a wonderful example of Taylor's "archaic" style, and one of my favorites. The broad, cartoon tone and flattened shapes drape a deceptively simple veil over the serious technical and formal challenges, not to mention the melodramatic plot. The structure is a twist on the old "show within a show" ruse, involving a dance company in rehearsal, a baby-napping, a wrongly accused thief, and a crime syndicate's exploits. The three duos that form the chorus (clad in proletariat-grey leotards and head scarves), and the lead couple, are given an extended passage of utmost difficulty—the women leap onto their partners’ shoulders with a bent knee, or spring off the mens’ chests, or step onto a shoulder. The men whip the women in windmill lifts, done swiftly enough to blur their features. 

Michael Trusnovec (a detective) and Laura Halzack (the mother of the ‘napped baby) may or may not be a couple; chivalry and communion always bubble under the surface in Taylor’s work. John Rawlings' graphic sets and costumes underscore the comic book punch; two cops carry an abstracted jail cell in front of Trusnovec, who later simply snaps two of the bars off in a jailbreak. Emotions are expressed in shorthand gestures; Trusnovec rubs his thigh to express concern, Halzack presses her bageled fists to her ears in distress. A hilarious, precisely choreographed knife fight led by stooge Jamie Rae Walker results in a pile of bodies, including the sacrificial baby, which Trusnovec has already used to steady a cartwheel.

George Smallwood, Francisco Graziano, Rob Kleinendorst, and Sean Mahoney in To Make Crops Grow. Photo: Jamie Young

The answer to the putative title question of To Make Crops Grow is simple: offer up one trophy wife in the form of Parisa Khobdeh. This premiere is more theater than dance, in the manner of 2012’s House of Joy. In a twist of genres, it connects this branch of his work to some Judson concepts where anything can be dance, even moving a field of rocks into an offering pile. James Samson makes a convincing farmer dad, with Heather McGinley his wife and Walker and Francisco Graziano their kids, while a slick May/December couple (Khobdeh and Michael Apuzzo) and their daughter show up, among others. Enter Kleinendorst (Ritual Conductor) who dons a freaky feather headdress and makes everyone pick a slip of paper to designate a sacrifice for the crops in a cross between Sacre and The Hunger Games. It’s a strange work that shares Taylor DNA with dances like Big Bertha and Oh, You Kid!

It shared a program with Sacre and two other early dances that defy category: Junction (1961), which plays with tempo and plasticity, and Three Epitaphs (1956), in which a remarkable depth of expression, especially by the masked Samson, is achieved through various exaggerations of those classic steps, the slump and trudge.

Perpetual Dawn, the other season premiere, is a lush, romantic dance to music by Johann David Heinichen (1683—1729), a contemporary of JS Bach. Santo Loquasto’s earth-hued costumes evoke a country social and his set, a painted pastoral landscape, takes on remarkably different versions of dawn—blue, pink, golden—depending on James Ingalls’ sylvan, moody lighting. The vocabulary Taylor uses here is relatively balletic, lending an air of formality to the unrushed pace. A recurring motif: a dancer freezes with one bent leg extending and flicking from a slightly backtilted torso, arms angled at 90º, and steps into a bent-kneed attitude. It’s an exclamation point in a dance otherwise filled with lyrical ovals, loops, and seamless fluidity.

Amy Young and McGinley play an intriguing game of charades (anyone know what clues they were signing?), and Graziano and Eran Bugge gently spin one another on a bent leg. Trusnovec and Halzack dance a gentle, private duet that ends with them seated in pinwheels; he pulls her close in a hug. Michelle Fleet does a bit of her Esplanade pit-a-pat running, seeking perhaps Michael Novak, with whom she finally dances. The curtain closes as the silhouetted dancers lope in endless figure eights. Romance endures. It’s a lovely ending to a gracious, intoxicating dance.

Paul Taylor Dance Company—Notebook Review, March 7

James Samson, Michael Trusnovec, and Sean Mahoney in Brandenburgs. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Paul Taylor Dance Company's season is underway at the Koch Theater (through March 24). The March 7 performance featured just two dances on the program rather than the usual three, in front of a packed, whooping and whistling house.

Speaking in Tongues (1988)

• Pentecostal preacher and his flock. Yikes!
• Simply reading the cast list is like reading a short story. 
• The first searing image: Michael Trusnovec (A Man of the Cloth), all in black, in silhouette, standing stock still in a doorway—omniscient, all-powerful, scrutinizing the townsfolk for strays and acolytes, which are sorted in due time. No one can convey as much through stillness as Trusnovec, not to mention his silky, weightless movement. He's like a superhero—Ironman?—who channels all the power in the universe through his gaze and body.
• Lovely duet between James Samson (Himself, as he recollects) and Laura Halzack (His Better Half), who are well-proportioned to be partners; velvety, plush movers full of nobility and ease.
• Amy Young (A Mother) and Jamie Rae Walker (Her Unwanted Daughter) dance several duets that read as touching, until you fully process their characters' names 
• Fine solos by Michelle Fleet (The Daughter Grown Up) and Rob Kleinendorst (Odd Man Out).
• The set—barn siding into which words are carved—looks terrific in the Koch.
• One of Taylor's longest, most dramatic, stand-alone dances.

Brandenburgs

• A perfect example of Taylor's breadth when it follows Speaking in Tongues. Are there more polar opposite works in his repertory?
• Sheer delight in movement and arranging five men and three women in geometrically satisfying ways to Bach's perfectly classical music.
• Michael T. is again the Sun around which all the other dancer-planets revolve. He gets to wear fancy pants—the color of faded moss, with sparkles around the waist—while the others wear regal, dark green velvet bodysuits and dresses.
• (There are now three Michaels—Apuzzo and Novak as well—in the ranks. Clearly if your name is Michael, it increases your odds of becoming a Taylor dancer. Get on that.)
• Parisa Kobdeh is now the go-to dancer for roles with humor, sass, and speed. In Brandenburgs, she dances several times with the men, and wags her shin at us winkingly.
• Eran Bugge has a radiant presence that expands with each performance.
• Amy Young, such a constant, flawless performer, has become a large part of the company's foundation.
• George Smallwood—the newest dancer—looks like he's having a ball.