by Leigh Witchel
In the middle of the Paul Taylor season the company served a triple-decker sandwich. The filling was a new work by Pam Tanowitz with one of Taylor’s most beautiful works and one of his sexiest at either end. Tanowitz on a Taylor bun isn’t a bad meal.
Tanowitz is in a period of overexposure but she was on safer ground at Taylor than she was at New York City Ballet. She chose safer music, Bach’s Oboe Sonata in G minor and Violin Concerto in A minor, so as Balanchine advised, if you hated it you could just close your eyes and listen.
Tanowitz’ commissioned works tend to examine and comment on a company’s repertory. In “all at once,” which had its premiere earlier this year, besides referencing Taylor’s works to Bach, there were also references to Taylor’s general vocabulary: arms retracted like feelers and other Taylor-isms. There were also non-Taylor motifs, such as thrusting the arms to the side in third arabesque. The piece began with a trio. A man passed the three, and a woman from the trio danced a solo. “all at once” had a meandering but insistent feeling, like someone practicing a speech in an empty room.
A movement from the violin concerto began and the dance continued with a spinning adagio. It ended with Parisa Khobdeh in a corner and Sean Mahoney standing and waiting. If this were a ballet, we would have expected the pas de deux, but Tanowitz moved into a solo for Mahoney that formed a bass ground as other couples came and went. The explosion of convention was bracing.
There was a lovely moment where Lee Duveneck kept his hand upraised as everyone passed him, then he and Michelle Fleet went into a final gigue, running and jumping. Duveneck did a solo of hip changes, and ended the ballet by lying down. Duveneck joined Taylor 2 in 2012 and made it into the main company two years ago. He seemed to be all over this program, cast in all three pieces. In the evening’s closer, “Piazzolla Caldera,” he showed off his flexible back.
A few times in “all at once,” Tanowitz quoted directly from Taylor, including the side to side jumps from “Cloven Kingdom,” but often when she quoted, it was nothing more than that. , but Tanowitz doesn’t build dances as much as she fractures and rearranges. She has been pulling apart everyone else’s toasters for a while now. It would be nice to see her build a toaster all on her own.
“Piazzolla Caldera” is a tough but vulnerable work, with steamy costumes and a smoky, ingenious set of hanging lamps by Santo Loquasto. It announces its points with hard, glittery edges. Robert Kleinendorst and Khobdeh looked great together in first duet; he echoed her sharp attack. She played the loner whose narrative threaded through the piece, dancing a tough, vulnerable solo when all the men rejected her. Stamping her foot in frustration, her sadness was defiant, and her arms suggested a partner who wasn’t there.
The section to “Celos” that starts as a male duet and turns into an ambiguous foursome, takes on a different shading depending on the casting. It’s ranged from the two men sodden drunk to the alcohol as a cover for desire. George Smallwood and Michael Apuzzo started out very acrobatic, but then their partnering took on a surprising, violent tinge as Smallwood started kicking and throwing Apuzzo before settling into a more usual sensuality.
There’s a male duet in the opening dance, “Sunset,” that also takes on a different character with different dancers. Opening the evening, Kleinendorst and Mahoney danced that duet. For them, it was a bro dance: Mahoney backed Kleinendorst down, and Kleinendorst scurried back in short quick shuffles. Kleinendorst was never limber, but that worked here; his constrained movement became a character point.
“Sunset” was in good shape, literally. When Eran Bugge raised her arms above her head in a shape midway between a tulip and a brimming goblet you could see the arm position many Taylor dancers had made before her. But there are so many touching and beautiful moments in the piece. We’re sensitized to the danger a single woman faces with a group of men and even dances that aren’t supposed to be about violence – such as “Fancy Free” – get colored by it. When Madelyn Ho was carried aloft by the men in “Sunset,” there wasn’t even a hint of menace: she was utterly safe. The soldiers formed a carpet for her, tossed her into waiting arms, and she luxuriated in it. She teased Mahoney about giving him her hand and walked away from the men on her own. They went off in the same direction, but not in pursuit.
One man also danced with all the women, but it was a section of quiet desperation where Taylor lifted the needle on Elgar and used bird calls. When the music began again, one woman became both a goddess and a mourner for the men. They lay down briefly, ramrod straight in two lines and you didn’t need to see anything more to get Taylor’s point, and why we’ll miss him so much now that he’s gone. In the most placid way, “Sunset” is a matter of life and death.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Sunset,” “all at once,” “Piazzolla Caldera” – Paul Taylor American Modern Dance
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
November 6, 2019
Cover: Lee Duveneck and Alex Clayton in “all at once.” Photo © Paula Lobo.
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