by Leigh Witchel
Instead of toppling the walls of the temple, what if Samson decided to hold a fundraiser instead? That might have been similar to the closing performance of the 150th anniversary celebration season at the 92NY, where Paul Taylor Dance Company came back to the Y after almost 67 years. It was a scene. Alan Cumming hosted. Adrian Danchig-Waring, Alicia Graf Mack and Damian Woetzel guested. And the main event was a staged semi-lec-dem, semi-documentary of Paul Taylor’s infamous performance of Seven New Dances done at this theater in 1957.
Before the company looked back, it looked forward, with a sketch book of three short excerpts by Lauren Lovette. The first was to Concerto Grosso by Erolynn Wallace. Lee Duveneck, in a green shirt and shorts, raced on, going this way and that. Jessica Ferretti and Austin Kelly joined in and moved the formation to a line.
Lovette responded to Wallace’s music, packed with with churning allegros with hyperactive motion to a driving beat. But you could have seen Jewel Box, premiered at about the same time for New Jersey Ballet and not realized it was by the same choreographer. She’s become bilingual in ballet and Taylor vocabulary. The trio jumped and the lights went out.
Kenny Corrigan and Maria Ambrose danced to a familiar choice, the Mahler Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, a surprise especially as Alexei Ratmansky had just used it. Among familiar versions, including Gerald Arpino’s Round of Angels, Lovette’s was the most weighted, with leans and rushes, but except for a few small carries, Corrigan and Ambrose stayed on the ground.
The last excerpt was for John Harnage and Madelyn Ho to Chaconne in Winter, a treatment of Bach’s Chaconne by Justin Vernon that was a bit too close to Hooked on Violin. The piece was very athletic, with racing and barrel turns for both Harnage and Ho. Harnage did a lot of isolations before he brought Ho round and they left to opposite sides. A good piece, but not the best musical choice.
The Story of Seven New Dances, scripted by Adam Goldman, was an intelligent excerpting of Taylor’s biography Private Domain, narrated by Cumming in his native Scottish accent to frame the story of that infamous concert done on October 20, 1957. It’s worth recalling that people close to Taylor said that some of the things he recounted didn’t square with their recollections and Taylor himself admitted he was not one to let facts get in the way of a better story.
Still, the sections read made the connection between the concert and the choreographer Taylor became. Epic, Taylor’s solo for himself to a recording announcing the time one could get by phone – something quotidian in 1957 and unheard of today, was set in front of Taylor’s meticulous line drawings to plot the solo out, and performed by Adrian Danchig-Waring, wearing a suit.
The dances were often cut down; Danchig-Waring did only a minute or so of the solo. You didn’t have to be there in 1957 to know it was not anything like it was. Cumming read adamantly from Private Domain, “No ballet!” Well, we got ballet and anything but what Seven New Dances was about – the presentation of ordinary movement as being worthy of performance. Not a single movement was done that way. Danchig-Waring changed facings by rising on to the balls of his feet, and stood at one point with 180° turnout. Which is likely natural for him, but not naturalistic. To close, he adjusted his cuffs, shrugged and left.
To very loud heartbeat, Ambrose, Lisa Borres and Christina Lynch Markham performed Panorama. The women stood naturally, wearing street clothes of the time. Does maintaining the 1957 styles of ordinary dress keep it ordinary, or make it period? It even felt as if the heartbeat had been given a remix. Again, in a fragment of the full work the women looked, waited, and grasped hands. Borres left and the work ended.
The curtain rose on Woetzel and Graf Mack in Duet, both looking elegant, but not moving. The curtain fell. It wasn’t 4’33” long but both of them could hold a stage without motion. Events II, also done in full at The Joyce Theater had Borres and Pearman waiting and walking in skirts and a breeze. Devon Louis skittered and hopped in Finale to music that had been sped up, then towards the end he burst into two high jetés before exiting.
Cumming read Taylor’s humorous account of the aftermath of the concert and his explanation of how he used the ideas from Seven New Dances in Esplanade. Taylor wrote this 12 years later, and who knows if his analysis was colored by hindsight, but you could see the natural “found” movement in the opening of Esplanade. The crucial difference is Taylor decided to make dance out of simpler, more natural material, but unlike in Seven New Dances, he didn’t question the idea of dance itself.
Also interesting to see these works back at 92NY. As Taylor joked in Private Domain, the theater manager said Taylor would be back there over his dead body. The dances fit on the stage, but felt slightly hemmed in. Tipton’s lighting was harder to achieve; the Kaufman has less elaborate soft goods and a simpler lighting plot. It has largely stopped being a dance house; dance performances now are done upstairs in the studios.
In Esplanade, which closed the evening, the beginning had a pose-to-pose quality, as if the first movement was a frieze. The smoothly phrased walks are what one thinks of as the building blocks of Esplanade, but here, after Seven New Dances, you saw the poses instead as essential ingredients: arms crossing, shifting hips.
Markham did the isolated role created by Bettie de Jong in the central adagio. Towards the end, when Ho raced in and confronted Markham, hinging back and repeating, Ho’s continuous phrasing gave the section a third dimension. Markham did two gasping cries, but kept it to that; an interesting mix of drama and restraint. Ho did more lovely phrasing in a skittering solo she had in her next allegro, finishing with flying into Lesniak’s arms. When Pearman stepped on Alex Clayton at the close of the adagio, she wobbled slightly as if she were on a balance ball.
Done now so many times, Esplanade still looked solid. Borres did the solo of continuous falls, not as if she were in a Sisyphean predicament but as if the continual imbalance were a delightful adventure. She flew straight up and crashed down with a smile like she had discovered a great new trick. At the close, Eran Bugge did quick steps round herself and opened her arms to give us the sweetest farewell.
This wasn’t 1957. For one thing, the house was full, packed with supporters. But after 65 years, the celebrity version of Seven New Dances didn’t have a lot to do with Taylor’s original intentions. It was glittery, elegant and not at all ordinary. But Seven New Dances was not where Taylor lived. In 1957, he was striking out on his own after working with both Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham and he needed to destroy a few idols in the temple.
Compare Lovette’s three new excerpts to Taylor’s Seven New Dances. What’s interesting was how establishment the excerpts were, but Lovette is establishment, it’s her upbringing and her expectations. Which is likely for the best. Lovette wasn’t taught by rebels, so at New York City Ballet, when she thought she was rebelling early on the results were naive. She’s much more assured as she is.
There’s little way to preserve the shock of the avant-garde. Taylor reported that in 1957 at the end of Epic, the audience left. Here, they cheered. The walls of the temple didn’t shake, or rattle, but hopefully the company got bankrolled.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
New Lovette Works, The Story of Seven New Dances, Esplanade – Paul Taylor Dance Company
92NY, New York, NY
May 13, 2024
Cover: Alicia Graf Mack and Damian Woetzel in Duet. Photo © Richard Termine.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
