by Leigh Witchel
The City Center Dance Festival couldn’t have come at a better time. After two years of dance groups being slammed by the pandemic, the theater hosted four New York companies, helping to present their home seasons. Paul Taylor Dance Company used live music for a two-week season that was a mix of standards and new works, including a premiere.
Though it’s set to Richard Wagner and Heinrich Baermann, 1985’s “Roses” has some kinship to pieces Taylor made to English scores, such as “Eventide” or “Sunset”: music that was rich and string-heavy.
Befitting a piece set to the “Siegfried Idyll,” the structure is idyllic, and also static: five couples, the women in simple black dresses; the men in gray outfits. The pairs stayed partnered through the piece in a series of rapturous duets while the other couples lounged. The vocabulary was simple and terre à terre: walks and balances, but felt restrained rather than bald.
Taylor often borrowed from himself; this time he nicked a line of recumbent dancers from “Esplanade.” The most vivid duet was for John Harnage and Madelyn Ho, who cartwheeled through one anothers’ legs, Harnage doing his cartwheels one-handed.
Finally as the music went diminuendo, everyone lay down and a new couple in white, Jada Pearman and Lee Duveneck, entered to dance to Baermann’s Adagio for Clarinet and Strings, as the other couples rolled to the back. Pearman and Duveneck’s duet was built from similar material as the prior ones; forming a central blossom, not a different bouquet. If the romance of “Roses” walked the line between treacly and sincere, not to worry. One of Taylor’s most disturbing works, “Last Look,” had its premiere in 1985 six days later.
Despite some handsome solos for its women and the male lead, “Brandenburgs,” from three years later, looked like a mashup of “Esplanade,” “Arden Court,” and Taylor’s other baroque ballets. More tellingly, it gave the pulse of the company. The male corps didn’t have great luck. Jake Vincent was injured mid-performance; he came down wrong after a jump, tried to go on and finally had to leave the stage.
In a company that always had dancers who stayed forever, only four have been there at least five years – two of those years during the pandemic. The level of the company is in flux, the dancers were less polished, more green. They went in and out of being able to hold the stage. At times they looked able but generic, as if we were watching the top class at SUNY Purchase, rather than Paul Taylor’s dancers.
Wearing lighter green than the others and bare-chested, Harnage took the role in “Brandenburgs” originated by Christopher Gillis and later stamped by Michael Trusnovec during his time as de facto company principal. Harnage danced in every piece that night and looked good in all three, but he didn’t yet possess an equivalent to Trusnovec’s arresting and demonic presence. Still, as he revolved in attitude or pushed the air away from him in his solo, the weight he acquired made it seem as if he could.
Shortly before the season, the company announced that Lauren Lovette had been named as Resident Choreographer, so “Pentimento” was her introduction to us in that position – and presumably stood as an explanation and reason for the appointment.
A large scale work, using most of the dancers to Ginastera’s “Variaciones Concertantes,” “Pentimento” began in silhouette. The dancers formed an amoeba-like line that shifted and a large red shawl appeared. This was the MacGuffin. Christina Lynch Markham thrashed the scarf while the others looked upset, then four men entered who shifted the other dancers, took the scarf and danced. The action proceeded into a choreographic “La Ronde,” where the scarf got passed from dancer to dancer as the piece progressed.
Lovette isn’t working in her native form, but if you had to switch languages from ballet, at least Taylor technique isn’t based on depth of vocabulary. She made something in the vicinity of the style, with a few typical Taylor moves. Her choreography woke up more in allegro than adagio.
The times the work began to make sense were all choreographic, not conceptual. Duveneck wrapped the shawl around his waist, à la Suzanne Farrell. Dancers joined him one by one while he did flowing turns, got lifted and set down. “Pentimento” made sense at that moment as a dance. Devon Louis’ vigorous solo after kept the energy, but Lovette tacked on another solo, and another and another. There was an adagio section and an allegro finale, where two lines of dancers converged. The scarf got tossed airborne and the piece ended.
Lovette managed to squeeze diverse choreography and transitions out of her MacGuffin, but as with her dances for New York City Ballet, conceptually the piece was at a standstill. Even with the gimmick, the intent of the dance wasn’t clear. The individual episodes were inventive, but not different in tone. When Pearman suddenly threw a ton of emotion into her possession of the scarf, it seemed like an overreaction because it was in a vacuum. Lovette mainly seemed to be trying to fill up space and steps, and the scarf had no more significance at the end of the piece than the beginning. It was just dirtier.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Roses,” “Pentimento,” “Offenbach Overtures” – Paul Taylor Dance Company
New York City Center, New York, NY
March 24, 2022
Cover: (L to R) Madelyn Ho, John Harnage, Maria Ambrose, and Jada Pearman in “Brandenburgs.” Photo credit © Ron Thiele.
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