by Leigh Witchel
The Taylor company’s season was a celebration of Taylor himself. Opening night featured a quartet of his dances, performed in tribute for free. For years, the company’s biggest sales point has been the portrait of Taylor as Janus-like: “The Master of Light and Dark.” The memorial program went beyond that to paint Taylor as an all-rounder, exhibiting a full range of styles: pure dance, comedy, darker works and metaphysical ones. They ranged widely in quality, but they give us a good hint of what Taylor post-Taylor will be like.
“Aureole,” from 1962, was Taylor’s breakout work, where he used Handel to build an analogue to ballet’s music visualization in his own vocabulary. Taylor made up his own structure for an adagio and variation, using a simple cradle lift as the main building block for a duet
His synthesis wasn’t reverent. Michelle Fleet swayed her hands and hips right. on. the. music. in such an obviously satisfying way it tweaked the Mickey Mouse musicality. In the finale of streaking entries and exits, the cast’s arms touched their heads in a parody of a ballet position. But Taylor technique isn’t ballet, and one of the dangers post-Taylor will be his work getting not just standardized, but balleticized. Sean Mahoney found a middle ground between weight and line; his feet not aggressively pointed, but he made sure they weren’t sickled.
The company chose one of Taylor’s dopier comedies to represent that genre, “Troilus and Cressida (reduced.)” Taylor did gags on a children’s theater level to Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” Along with a trio of Cupids with 1930’s Marcelled hairdos, Santo Loquasto even costumed the Greek invaders in capes like the alligators in “Fantasia.”
Rob Kleinendorst originated Troilus back in ’06, and he’s still playing him as a dim lug who could deadlift a girl, when his purple pants weren’t falling down. (Could this be an inside joke by Loquasto or Taylor to the infamous “Romeo and Juliet” telecast in ’88 where Kevin MacKenzie forgot to remove his purple sweatpants?) Cressida is a later version of Lisa Viola’s take on Gilda Radner’s Colleen Fernman. Parisa Khobdeh toned down the vegged-out sight gags. “Troilus” ended with a parody of 19th century opera house ballet: fish dives, fouettés and a kick line. If the humor is threadbare, at least it’s short.
Back to the top of the heap – literally. “Last Look,” one of Taylor’s most enigmatically disturbing dances, began with a pile of bodies: women in wrap dresses, men in green shirts and pants, all self-absorbed and surrounded by mirrors in a desperation too frantic to know how desperate it was.
Alex Clayton clutched at his neck and started moving as if shocked. The rest of the group slammed themselves, jumping wildly and then lying face down like invertebrates being jolted in a biology lab. The ballet continued with furtive, shadowy encounters. Klenendorst and Khobdeh tentatively met in the darkness, reaching towards one another without connecting. When they finally did, he grabbed her from behind and yanked her as if dislodging something from her throat. They sank, he tossed her away before they crawled off-scene.
It came to a close as it began, with everyone on the ground flailing, then a slow final dance to the mirrors. Kleinendorst jumped and slid, ignoring the bodies in favor of his own reflection. Once again the cast became a pile, and finally as the lights went out Khobdeh fell lifeless at the top.
At the time Arlene Croce saw references to apocalyptic nightclub fires that had been in the news, but Taylor and composer Donald York also seemed to be channeling “La Valse.” You heard it all over the score, and while Taylor removed the focus from a single heroine and shifted it to the crowd, the self-absorption of Balanchine’s heroine was also part of her downfall.
“Beloved Renegade,” from 2008, was one of the last major works Taylor made, though there was a decade’s more production. This is a subject for debate. Some might put the decline later, I’d say 2001’s “Fiends Angelical” was the last work at his earlier level. Taylor set Poulenc’s organ setting of the “Gloria,” – about as bombastic and fixed in meaning as you’re going to get – and tried to make it into the story of Walt Whitman.
It isn’t just Whitman or Poulenc whose echoes you can see in “Beloved Renegade.” It’s been said that Balanchine’s aesthetic was cemented in the late 1920’s – Paul Taylor’s coalesced in the 1950’s in a New York that contained not only Balanchine and Graham, but Ashton.
One of the company’s newest dancers, Marie Ambrose, took on the role of the angel figure in a white leotard. She struck a pose from antiquity; Mercury’s attitude. Christina Lynch Markham appears later in a dress, and the relationship among Ambrose, Markham and Michael Novak echoed Ashton’s “Illuminations” – made in 1950 for New York City Ballet: a poet with his two avatars, one celestial and one terrestrial.
Novak, the company’s new Artistic Director, took on Michael Trusnovec’s role of the Whitman figure. After a long trio, Ambrose directed Novak to lie down. He does – it’s his grave. She posed over him in the fateful attitude; it was Taylor’s shorthand for the eternal.
“Beloved Renegade” never reached the profundity of either Poulenc or Whitman – or for that matter earlier Taylor. He captioned the sections by Whitman quotes instead of the sung words, but Poulenc – or the church – were not saying anything Whitman – or Taylor – was. And then there was Taylor’s juvenile humor. You could squirm through it in “Troilus.” But this wasn’t Ponchielli turned into “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.” This was a mass and Taylor was making fart jokes.
As the central figure, Novak didn’t have the demonic charisma Trusnovec did, but he could hold the part and the stage. The most interesting thing about his performance were the echoes, both of Trusnovec and of Taylor himself through Trusnovec. There was a period immediately after Balanchine’s death when Croce wrote that NYCB was dancing better from momentum. It looks as if that may be happening here. Senior dancers Mahoney and Kleinendorst look like they’ve had a second wind, though the second section of “Beloved Renegade” was fast enough you saw Kleinendorst start to get ragged.
Like most New York dance companies, Taylor’s learned from the aftermaths at both NYCB and the Graham companies, and a succession plan was in place. Now the hard work begins: to discover what life after Taylor means.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Aureole,” “Troilus and Cressida (reduced)” “Last Look,” “Beloved Renegade” – Paul Taylor American Modern Dance
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 29, 2019
Cover: “Last Look.” Photo © Paul B. Goode.
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