The Paul Taylor Dance Company returned to the Auditorium Theater after a thirty-year hiatus to remind us that Taylor, 83 and still creating, is one of the greats. Whether with a hit or, as sometimes happens with bold experimentation, a miss, Taylor is always exploring. The three contrasting pieces that comprised the company’s Chicago program showcased distinctive aspects of Taylor’s theatrical voice, as well as common threads that distinguish all of his work.
Black Tuesday (2001), originally commissioned by American Ballet Theater, at first appears to be an endearing slice of American nostalgia, unfolding in a series of duets, solos, and ensemble variations set to eight Depression era songs. The snappy mix of social dance idioms of the time, American character dance, and ballet show the pluck and indomitable American spirit to persevere in hard times. But, typical of Taylor, another layer reveals itself in four solos that tear open the pain and devastation that lie beneath the surface. Breaking convention, the wholly impulse-based movement of the solos is stark, emotionally raw, and immediate, a pointed commentary that casts back a dark shadow over the light-hearted entertainment of the duets and group sequences. Christina Lynch Markham’s gutsy pregnant woman in Sittin on a Rubbish Can, is classic Taylor, surprising us with irony, seething anger, and the defiance of the underdog. Heather McGinley’s The Boulevard of Broken Dreams gives us a shattered soul whose extremes of back arches and rag doll helplessness in a series of lurching ronds de jambes expose the heartbreaking underbelly of life during the Depression. The plucky Jamie Rae Walker gives comic relief combining sass and impressive jetes battus as a girl “newsie” in I Went Hunting and The Big Bad Wolf Was Dead. The final solo, magnificently danced by Michael Trusnovek, gives us Taylor’s genius at his most vulnerable and most inventive. Daring to reinvent Brother Can You Spare A Dime, he creates a movement monologue that tells an entire life story with such emotionally specific movement and such original integration of the music that it is as if we are hearing the song for the first time. Here, Taylor blends lyrics, melody, and mood to create a dramatic universe of lament that derives its intensity from core contractions, back falls, and wrenching gestures of longing, regret and lost hope.
In Sunset (1983), Taylor’s deliberate ambiguity of time, place, and story presents an impressionistic essay on the universal dilemmas of soldiers on leave in war-time, a tone-poem to lost love, a story left unfinished. Taylor’s use of Elgar’s familiar Serenade for Strings and Elegy For Strings evokes the lyrical past of memory and provides a fine example of Taylor’s contrasting use of fast movement and legato music. Somewhat confusing are the mixed signals of costuming and set. The four women’s filmy white shirtwaist dresses suggest America in the forties or fifties, while the six men in khaki uniforms and red berets could be soldiers from anywhere. The set consists of a stage-right panel with what could be a Middle Eastern print design and a waist-high length of metal bars suggesting a bus terminal gate. The soldiers are in transit stage-right, while the girls are home-grown and available stage-left. The best part of Sunset is the interlude at dusk, set to the sounds of crickets and birds, where Taylor’s signature angel arms, rapid stag leaps and intimate coupling hold visual interest. Less satisfying are snatches of war depicting a soldier’s death, and the near misses of relationships. Whether Taylor is using this scenario as metaphor for the universal condition of transitoriness, or to comment on the sadness of war, the movement is luscious. A moment that stands out is when one of the women steps on the backs of the men, extending into arabesque on each step with innocent assurance. While the dancing was certainly executed well-enough to give us a good clear rendering of Taylor’s choreography, the women in this piece in particular were not up to the technical brilliance of previous casts.
Mercurial Tidings (1982) is an abstract extravaganza of pure dance, a piece that embodies everything Taylor does best. His visualization of Franz Schubert’s symphonic excerpts gets inside the blood and guts of the orchestration in a way no one else does, and the movement invention is a riot of extremes that keep bursting across the stage with new ideas at every turn. Barefoot and costumed in electric blue versions of unitards with red piping spiraling around torsos and legs like run-away staff lines off the musical score, the company dances like there’s no tomorrow and seems to be most in their element in this piece. Here, Taylor is both musician and choreographer. It’s as if he loved the music so thoroughly that he swallowed Franz Schubert, digested him, and exhaled an entirely new creature of rapturous proportions comprised of music that dances and dance that is music. So integrated are the orchestration and choreography, you “hear” exclamations of joyful leaps and boundless skitters painting the space, the visual voices of violins and flutes overlapping. The patterning of different group activities going on at once in different parts of the stage embodies the rhythmic complexity of the music. Taylor’s angel arms catch the accent of a melody in a lightning trajectory across the stage, body hiccups in a giddy gallop barely touch ground, and tilting fourth-position arms give their Mercurial tidings to the gods. A joyful noise, indeed!