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.
