by Leigh Witchel
It’s not easy to go up against a master, and Lauren Lovette’s had to do it since she started choreographing at New York City Ballet. Now, at Paul Taylor Dance Company, she’s acquired the skills to play in that arena.
Her New York premiere, “Dreamachine” is set in a mechanical world, but of high and low tech: some Blade Runner, some Rube Goldberg, designed by Taylor’s most stalwart and talented collaborators. Santo Loquasto did the costumes and sets; Jennifer Tipton lit the stage with fluorescent tubing on booms half-lowered overhead. Silver draperies and side lights cast theatrical shadows at the back. Lying on the floor and dressed in orange, Kristin Draucker stretched and rose.
Five machine-folk, in silver helmets and shiny black skin tight outfits, entered and left. They were unrecognizable except by general size. They stared at Draucker, but didn’t really confront until her one finally accosted and she danced with him.
The mechanical folk seemed familiar to her; one of them shoved her lightly like kids on a playground. They collapsed, she rearranged them and they collapsed again. A man encountering her did a handstand and split.
In a Taylor moment, Draucker helped one mechanico walk on to the man’s shoulders. They formed a part-totem, part-wheelbarrow and followed her off. The ambivalence felt a lot like Taylor as well as the atmosphere. “Dreamachine” didn’t have the darkness of “Last Look,” but it recalled it.
In the next movement the lights went to red and orange. The dancers changed costumes and became recognizable. Lisa Borres came out with a different ladder/barrow contraption; Alex Clayton and Devon Louis, wearing jumpsuits, had a bunch of objects. An exercise ball got tossed on and off.
You could see that Lovette had been doing her homework. She gave Clayton, who is short and springy, a tight solo of fast repeated jumps, the kind that Taylor also gave that body type. She’s learned Taylor’s vocabulary and how to use it. That’s impressive enough.
The work continued as Lee Duveneck was rolled out lying on a skateboard. Played by David LaMarche conducting the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, Michael Daugherty’s eponymous percussion concerto moved into chimes and sound effects.
Skateboards, balls, ladders . . . we were in a weird playground. Weird but ingratiating. The cast raced and danced, tossing balls and flourishing a red umbrella as the music played a variation on “There’s No Place Like Home.” A medicine ball was tossed on one more time, and someone leaped over it as the lights went out.
Jessica Ferretti, wearing a crop top and ripped jeans, danced a slow adagio to vibraphone, leaving briefly to slide on again. When she met Kenny Corrigan, also wearing ripped jeans, the slides got exaggerated, because he was wearing Heelys – the sneakers with hidden wheels that were a fad when Lovette was a girl. Lovette may be learning from Taylor, but she’s a Millennial at heart. Daugherty mentioned Rube Goldberg in the movement’s title, but Lovette’s references were more Mario Brothers.
She went beyond the gimmick Heelys to incorporating them fully into the dance. Corrigan alternately slid and danced with Ferretti, but because of the wheels, she moved him as often as her moved her. You saw Lovette’s ballet roots; she made an inventive variation of the Big Pas de Deux.
At the climax, Ferretti wrapped round Corrigan’s legs and slid down: it was “Prodigal Son” with the genders switched. The two sped up into an allegro, but like anemones floating underwater. Ferretti pushed Corrigan to roll him off but she remained in the center.
Louis entered, tumbling, sliding and racing to a snare drum rumble. The cast, now in black jumpsuits and sunglasses, came in at the sides. Four of them formed a chorus as Louis did high karate kicks. As people entered and exited, the group got larger, then smaller with entrances and exits. Louis lifted Borres overhead; he then left while everyone rushed about, only for him to return in a fluid freestyle, accosted by Duveneck to a snare drum rattle. More acrobatics: he tossed Madelyn Ho and she climbed up on to his shoulders. Finally he charged at the group and was tossed up high on to the others to end.
Lovette has come a long way since her initial efforts, not just in making dances but in what a dance can be made out of. It felt as if she had learned a lot from Taylor’s cryptic dances such as “Scudorama” or “Last Look” about picking ideas that were provocative, but still could be expressed in dance. Her concepts were still big, but both more workable and more sophisticated, an issue that haunted her early work.
“Eventide,” from 1997, is a Taylor dance that cooked at a simmer. Three couples started side by side in the main motif, walking close together hand in hand. A fourth couple entered; all of them in wheat tones. The men wore high-waisted trousers with suspenders, the women were in simple dresses with a small shawl collar draped and flowing round the shoulders. The backdrop was trees through the haze of a misty golden sunset.
The hint of the design palette, by Loquasto, was of farmers: not landed gentry, but also not impoverished. The music, two pieces for viola by Ralph Vaughan Williams, suggested early 20th century England, but the American character of Taylor’s dancers and the moments left unsaid make it feel that it could just as easily have happened somewhere outside of Winesburg, Ohio.
In the main walking motif, Taylor set up a balanced composition and a sense of stability of relationships. The man always led, offering his hand; the women took it, pressing hers into it. But there were always hints that the stability was fragile. Corrigan left Maria Ambrose to close the movement, and a fifth couple, Duveneck and Eran Bugge, came on to dance.
Their duet, built on walks and hesitations, was almost an exercise in tone. Again, arms were offered and hands taken. He carried her round gently supine and lifted her silently onto his shoulders, carrying her off as she lay on her side.
A brief allegro for Austin Kelly and Jada Pearman, leaping and running into slides and jumps ended in an embrace. A pastoral adagio for two couples, with hands to shoulders and exiting on the diagonal, felt like a square dance, slowed down.
The work built up to a duet for Ambrose and Corrigan, originally done by Rachel Berman and Andrew Asnes. Ambrose entered first, Corrigan came in opposite her at the corner, crossed his arms, and moved his open hand down his thigh and beckoned her.
Ambrose was pulled back, only partially of her own volition, and Corrigan moved towards her and rolled his pelvis. She finally took his hand to dance, but at the end, he left where he entered – without her. She crouched silently to the floor.
Taylor played one mood off another. After a short allegro for Borres and Clayton that ended with Borres chasing Clayton off, Duveneck was revealed in same position as Ambrose. Bugge came up to him, hand on shoulder to bring him up to standing. Their duet was again based on gentle lifts climaxing with the smallest carry round done three times.
The finale was entirely walking patterns, the kind of less-is-more that Taylor could pull off. The women and man backed out to opposite sides; Bugge and Duveneck circled, then left as well.
There’s no way to know just from watching if this was the casting, the coaching or current morality, but “Eventide” felt watered down from 1997, where the main duet was a portrait of a co-dependent relationship. Asnes was overtly sexual and domineering, Berman assented to it. Here, when Corrigan touched Ambrose on the shoulders, it was as gentle as any of the other men. Taylor was reaching back to 20th century narratives of sexuality, “Pillar of Fire” or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The 2023 approach looked only partially like a correction attempt. It felt like avoidance as well as throwing the relationship to the other couples off balance.
“Esplanade” has even more performance data points and yet it felt harder to compare. The cast had a brisk ease that felt right, dancing with an easy plié and more weight.
Ambrose took Bettie De Jong’s solo role in the central section, finding darkness without commenting on it. Yet after everyone walked cramped and aching down a diagonal in Tipton’s evocative lighting, Ambrose was left alone and did a few small heaves that felt bigger in memory (but were they? My notes of previous performances give no record).
We came back to safety to an allegro with Ho skittering round the space, into Shawn Lesniak’s arms. In a change from habit that isn’t a deterioration, Ho was not playing one of Taylor’s “runts.” That role went to Eran Bugge. It was almost disorienting to see it not go to the shortest dancer, but it’s good Ho’s not stuck in that slot.
Taylor overlapped with Balanchine for the final two movements, using Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. Draucker was passed from man to man as part of a musically deft and sensitive sextet of pedestrian movement, which proved that structure and composition can get you as far as steps. The final moments, where Pearman stepped on Louis as he lay there, went iffy. She almost lost her footing, but he figured out how to get her off of him seamlessly.
The final joyous movement of racing, turning and sliding into SPLATS! was done at full tilt, but still clear. Ho sailed fearlessly back onto Louis, and once again (are they trying to tell us something?) Pearman stepped over and on him. The last moment contained a near-comic flub: Bugge stumbled on the very last pose. Oh, girl. That is not when you want to stumble.
The curious and risky move of importing a ballet dancer to become resident choreographer for the company has paid off both for the company and Lovette, and she’s worked hard for it. The company has also been dancing well. They look as if they’re dancing Taylor, even when they’re doing Lovette. Still, there was a bit of a Bob Ross “How to Draw” feeling in the readings, less from dancing than the passage of time. Forty eight years have gone by since Taylor made “Esplanade” and performers feel a need to comment to give context.
Some Taylor is going to need to be smoothed out as time goes on. I’d be surprised if “Oh, You Kid!” (Taylor’s inscrutable dance from 1999 that used Klan hoods as a joke far less successfully than “Blazing Saddles”) persisted in repertory, and that’s no great loss.
Still, we’re also bowdlerizing the past at the slightest fear of upsetting the present. Even to the most supple Vaughan Williams, the world is not a place populated only by happy, sensitive couples, and we have the resilience to handle that.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Dreamachine,” “Eventide,” “Esplanade” – Paul Taylor Dance Company
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
November 1, 2023
Cover: Kristin Draucker in “Dreamachine.” Photo © Whitney Browne.
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