Paul Taylor Dance Company winds up its Lincoln Center three week season with a weekend of fabulous works. Get to the theater for one of the last four performances. Get the book at the souvenir bar. Get the mug. Get the tee-shirt. Get some a them fancy soaps that'ir guaranteed to make you smell like a dancer.
Looking forward to the 60th Anniversary Season.
Paul Taylor Dance Company opened its second annual season at Lincoln Center this week. The company is in its 59th year and is looking ahead to celebrating its 60th anniversary next year at Lincoln Center. For most of us, getting to 60 is no small accomplishment. Joints wear out. The brain starts to shrivel up. Bladder muscles loosen. Things itch that didn't used to. But for a modern dance company or any dance company to thrive for 60 years – that's rare and also cause for a big whopping celebration. But that's next year. Right now, PTDC has a rich season of favorite works going full blast at the Koch Theater.
On opening night, the company premiered a new gem entitled Perpetual Dawn to music by Johann David Heinichen, a German Baroque composer. Paul Taylor found inspiration for the work in Emily Dickinson's poem, It was a quiet way – in which Dickinson described how time stood still when she was with the one she loved. The Playbill included a quote from the last four lines of the poem that may have been slightly inaccurate. "It was not night nor noon" in most Dickinson collections is "It was not Night nor Morn – "
The costumes by Santo Loquasto consisted of smock-type dresses for the women and knickers for the men. The warm, earthen color scheme of the costumes complimented the Impressionistic country scene on the painted backdrop, also by Loquasto. The choreography was at times solemn but was mostly sunny and optimistic. The dance material was more familiar than not. There was nothing fancy that might obscure the soothing light of the eternal dawn from shining through it. Sometimes it felt like a sign-off – a dance version of Garrison Keillor's Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Leave it to Paul Taylor to one night present a work inspired by the honorably religious Emily Dickinson and the very next night present a work inspired by the atrocities and abhorrent behavior of the Southern evangelists and their followers. When Taylor choreographed Speaking in Tongues in 1988, tele-evangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim & Tammy Bakker were at their most exposed and a constant focus of the media. According to the Playbill, the dance's title "refers to a certain impulsive projection of private religious emotion into the public setting of a communal prayer service."
The dancers skillfully projected the religious fervor of people who were "possessed" and in the middle of a religious experience through twitching, collapsing to the floor, rapid patting together of the hands, and other mindless cult-like movements. The dance is dark, brutal, and sinister, but it is also brilliantly conceived and executed dance theater. Michael Trusnovec portrayed The Man of the Cloth with chilling authenticity. His unyielding posture and stiff legged movements conveyed the severity of his authority over the congregation. Here was someone to be afraid of but also someone to whom you were attracted enough to follow to the ends of the earth – as the congregation in this dance did.
Speaking in Tongues was presented on PBS many years ago, and Taylor was awarded an Emmy for it. You have a chance to see it performed by a superb cast on Saturday, March 9th at 8pm and Thursday March 21st at 7pm. If you are a dance theater fan, don't miss it.
The first two evenings of the season included the witty 3 Epitaphs which was created in 1956, the plotless Brandenburgs from 1988 in which Amy Young captivated, Junction of tranquility and fervor from 1961, and Offenbach Overtures from 1995 in which Parisa Khobdeh was a comedic standout.
The Pump Bump Award, coated with Tammy's mascara and enhanced with Swaggart sex spikes, is awarded to the cast of Speaking in Tongues for its moving portrayal of episodes not yet fully in our past.
Tickets go on sale September 17th at the Koch Theater! Prices have increased only slightly from last year and once again there will be a lot of seats in the orchestra, 1st, and 2nd rings that will be $10 according to the recent PTDC mailing. Multiple performance discounts for most price levels will be available, too.
Highlights of the spring season will include:
Speaking in Tongues
To Make Crops Grow (premiere)
Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal)
Eventide
Scudorama
Esplanade
Gossamer Gallants
among many others and a brand new work by Paul Taylor which is being documented through the Create with Taylor program once again this year. Anyone can follow the creation process by accessing the videos, blog, and pictures that come with a $5 gift which you can register here. Here's the link to the webpage that describes all of the repertory being danced during 2013 along with musical excerpts. It is a slight disappointment that Piazzolla Caldera won't be part of the season this year; it always is such a crowd favorite.
The March 6th performance will honor the 25th anniversaries of Speaking in Tongues and Brandenburgs. Every ticket in the house will be $5. Purchase information for this special performance will be announced by PTDC on January 14th.
During September and October, many of us will be making repeated visits to the theater for NYCB's fabulous upcoming fall season. That will be the perfect time to stop by the box office and snatch up choice seats for PTDC spring performances. Look for this brochure in the lobby. Buy early.
It is so great that PTDC, NYCB, the Met Opera, and NYPhil are organized enough to be able to sell tickets to spring performances this far ahead of time. It really helps the arts patron plan. It would be nice – and considerate – if ABT could do the same.
Look for this brochure at the box office:
Paul Taylor Dance Company opened its inaugural season at Lincoln Center last night with a 50th anniversary performance of Paul Taylor's 1962 creation Auerole! Every seat in the house cost $3.50 which was the top ticket price back in 1962.
A few of us remember 1962. The time was all about dance: The Twist, The Peppermint Twist, The Watusi, The Mashed Potato, The Locomotion. Those were the good old days when The Duke of Earl Shot Liberty Valance and Sealed It With A Kiss to Johnny Angel down in Palisades Park where The Stripper named Ramblin' Rose, who was actually Bobby's Girl, Limbo Rocked with her Good Luck Charms, Shiela and Sherry, that is, Sheh-eh-ry, and the Soldier Boy named Norman was A Rebel who Just because he doesn't do what everybody else does, that's no reason why we can't share love. Haglund remembers it well. He was ten.
The good old days of dance were bettered last night. The current Taylor dancers were like a gleaming, perfectly calibrated, modern fuel injected engine that had been inserted into the classic choreographic body. They maneuvered the swerves, swivels, loops, parallel cabrioles, and the parallel skiiing glissades with a humming energy that made Auerole a pure joy to watch.
Later they shifted into a piston-pumping 5th gear performance of Taylor's glorious Brandenburgs to Bach's concertos with the brilliant Michael Trusnovec leading the way and Eran Bugge not far behind. It was one of those performances where you could feel the energy building in the audience as it watched the intricate patterns of movement develop, accelerate, and redesign themselves. Brandenburgs looked as much at home on the stage in the House of Balanchine as Concerto Barocco does. If the hints of possible PTDC/NYCB collaborative programing are for real, a great opening program would be Brandenburgs and Barocco together.
The evening's program also included the comedic Troilus and Cressida (reduced) with Robert Kleinendorst as the King of Troy who frequently and hilariously had trouble keeping his purple sweatpants up during his PdD with Jamie Rae Walker's amorous Cressida. (LOL, it brought back Lincoln Center memories of a certain Romeo's total humiliation of ABT in 1988.)
The final dance on the program was Piazzolla Caldera, a piece of pure genius which Taylor made in 1997. Santo Loquasto's designs included bustiers for the women and lamps that hung from the ceiling and swayed in their own choreography. All of the dancers sizzled in the tango-inspired moves. Such a delicious piece to end the evening.
The only complaint about the evening might be with the overall lighting of the stage. It didn't seem that the theater's lighting technical wizardry was being used, and sometimes things looked a little under-lighted. Also, it was weird having the house lights around the rings completely darkened instead of dimmed.
The theater was packed to the very back of the 4th Ring with a crowd that seemed evenly mixed among young, middle aged, and seniors, but it wasn't the basic crowd that you usually see at NYCB performances. Haglund overheard a woman remark, "I don't think that I've ever been in this theater." So it seems that while PTDC will attract new audiences to its performances by moving to Lincoln Center, the Center itself will enjoy new patronage from having PTDC as a resident. All good.
What a great evening. Here's a hot tangerine tango Pump Bump Award for the Paul Taylor Dance Company for its awesome inaugural performance at Lincoln Center!
