from CLAUDIA LA ROCCO'S PERFORMANCE CLUB....

first published in the Performance Club Blog

"critique as performance"

Letter from Manhattan

Sean Mahoney and Heather McGinley in "House of Joy." Photo: Paul B. Goode.

With Paul Taylor’s choreography newly set inside the proscenium arch of the theater that Lincoln Kirstein built for the New York City Ballet, how not to read his work within that context, as well as the overarching Taylorian one from which it springs?  You can, for instance, approach his new House of Joy as a gloss on Jerome Robbins’s seemingly innocuous  Fancy Free (1944).  Because what do you see when a sailor saunters on stage in search of female companionship, if not a visual echo?

 Intentional, or coincidental,  there are clear correspondences. Seeing the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Koch Theater is like looking at it though a new lens. The theater is larger, but the dances seems more enclosed.  These dances have always been self-contained worlds, but here they seem more so.  You can peer in.  You can fall in, the way Harry Potter falls into Dumbledore’s pensieve, that stone basin filled with a silver fog of memories. And, as ever, you can make stuff up about the dances. This is delicious, and fun, to let your mind range around inside a repertory, finding things to think about…. Why take Paul Taylor literally, I wonder? People seem to do it, but while he is plain-spoken and unfancy in movement terms, he is a fanciful dance-maker. Macabre, but fanciful.

Which leads us to the final weekend of the company’s three week run, and the Saturday Matinee From Hell. On the program: Oh You Kid (1999), involving among other amusements some larking about by the Ku Klux Klan, and an intermission;  House of Joy, that brief work—devoid of pleasure—about some hookers and their pimps and their johns—with one undergoing a beating that looks suggestive of gay bashing, despite the story line; and then after a pause, Big Bertha (1970), a work of such utter depravity that it is a source of amazement to me that it ever got allowed on stage in the first place.  This was topped off by Esplanade (1975)—which I adore as who does not?—but I staggered out after Big Bertha to think over what I had just seen. It was so grim that the children in the audience and their chaperones were invited to enjoy an ice cream party during the middle two numbers.

Watching these pieces I wondered, Who are these people rattling around in the choreographer’s head?  That’s for him to know  (or not know—his choice)  but whether his  dance-making is displacement, projection, observation, fantasy, or what have you, once it’s on stage it is what it is: art.  Dance fiction. What kind, from what period, for whose delectation, and their contemporary applicability and relevance are currently popular questions beyond the scope of the kind of thinking I do about these things. It’s becoming trendy to call Taylor dated, or cloaked, though really the only thing dated about him is some of his latter-day costuming. Nothing stales like stretch fabric. In  House of Joy, the choreographer is possibly addressing these literalist critiques. He casts his most beauteous female (prima inter pares in a stable of pulchritude) Parisa Kobdeh as a vicious character of indeterminate sex—her breasts are clearly there but  she otherwise leans towards male. A biker, in the market for a sado-erotic threesome. She doesn’t happen to pick the sad wallflower hooker  played by Jeffrey Smith.  Like Kobdeh, he’s not really successfully transitioned—he has huge biceps—and he can’t walk in high heels. His gender is entirely smudged, and the message seems to be: This is make believe, there are characters, this is the theater, my mind is singular but my themes are plural. This isn’t about me, and it isn’t about you.

Social relevance comes and goes; but these dances are always relevant to me. First of all because they are objects of beauty; and second, because they are interesting. (I like thinking about matters like revealment and concealment.)  Further, love is always in season, and true evil never goes out of style.

Amy Young, Michael Trusnovec and Eran Bugge in "Big Bertha." Photo: Paul B. Goode.

Big Bertha is just that. Evil. It seems to show how an unfettered libido functions outside the restraints of common decency and common sense, this season via a true Apollo of the dance theater—Michael Trusnovec, who elsewhere during the run was the sunlit god at the center of Aureole. Trusnovec doesn’t look anything like Evil, being a  blond prince of lightness, but there he is, got up in clothes from the Eisenhower Administration, and off to the fairground with his wife and daughter. These two are a sub-plot unto themselves: the daughter can dance up a storm whereas the mother is beginning to trip—or always has tripped—over her own feet.

That’s an old story. The girl who outshines her mother. Otherwise, this dance is totally Oedipal, except Oedipus here is not enjoying the sexual favors of a woman who unknown to him is his mother—like say, Paul Taylor dancing with Martha Graham in her company, when he was a handsome young man, and she was a ravenous Jocasta, no matter the name of the roles she gave herself.  So here’s the story Martha’s son Paul tells in Big Bertha: At a fair ground, a decorous family happens upon a patriotic looking nickelodeon. (Its name is the same as the infamous German howitzer, but also serves as a portmanteau moniker for things that are large for their type: Big Bertha.) The happy scene immediately spirals out of control, until under the influence of  this malign Freudian Jukebox, father debauches and then rapes daughter, to carnival music. Meanwhile, mother discovers  dirty dancing, and stripping to her chemise, does some suggestive things with her scarf. And we sit there slack-jawed at what we are looking at.  Exquisitely danced, exquisitely lit, exquisitely designed, meticulous in every way. Fantasy is one thing. This is something else. What it seems, and something else.

So let’s see. What’s going on here?  Some people arrive on the scene, just kind of happy-go- lucky normal folks. They torture an authority figure with a wand into playing music and conducting them in dances. The figure takes over, directing them in ways that are shocking and seem to expose their darkest secrets. These are dancers, I thought, and Big Bertha  is Terpsichore, the Horrible Awful Muse of Dance.

And then I got it. Bertha is Martha. Because back when he made this dance, Taylor was himself in it. He was telling his own story! He was just an ordinary guy, handsome as the day was long, and he wandered into  Martha Graham’s studio and the next thing he knew, he was up to his ears in onstage incest. These days, he’s moved on. And up. Offstage in his studio, Paul Taylor is up on that platform now.

Paul Taylor is Big Bertha! The dancers wander in, and again and again and again, they start him up,  he raises his wand, and out pours choreography. And the next thing they know, they’re cross-dressed hookers. They’re the stuff of  nightmares, of daydreams, of sunshine, of sorrow. Whether Taylor enfolds us in joy or grief or melancholy or horror or sentiment or comedy  or introspection or retrospection depends on I don’t know what. Maybe the weather. Maybe his dog at any given time. Maybe what arrived in the mail. Maybe what he’s reading.  Maybe—and this is so likely it goes without saying—the music he decides to work with…

The music. There is one last possibility. What if those people in Big Bertha are attending a matinee? They buy a ticket, the apparatus jerks into action, and people are made to dance. We make them do it. Time and again, year after year. I don’t know whether to cry, or to laugh. But this:  when Paul Taylor takes a bow—still dreamboat handsome in his dark suit—I rise at once to my feet. He tugs at me. He’s a man for all seasons and a man for all moods, and every spring since forever, it’s Taylor time.

Bettie de Jong, Eileen Cropley, Paul Taylor and Carolyn Adams in “Big Bertha.” Photo: Jack Mitchell.

Thanks to my Performance Club editor Claudia La Rocco. This post first was published on the Performance Club Blog in slightly different format.

©Nancy Dalva 2012

PAUL TAYLOR

originally published in 
 

Paul Taylor Dance Company | PAUL TAYLOR with Nancy Dalva

by Nancy Dalva

MARCH 13 – APRIL 1 | DAVID H. KOCH THEATER AT LINCOLN CENTER

After decades of spring seasons at Manhattan’s City Center, this month the Paul Taylor Dance Company moves to the David H. Koch Theater, home of New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. In anticipation, the eponymous choreographer answered some questions from Nancy Dalva.

 

Paul Taylor. Photo credit: Maxine Hicks.

Nancy Dalva (Rail): Wouldn’t Lincoln Kirstein be pleased! Here you are, opening in the house that he built.

Paul Taylor: You know, I think he would. He approved of my work and he actually helped me along the way, and I think he’d be glad that my company would finally be seen in that wonderful house.

Rail: He invited you to join New York City Ballet, yes?

Taylor: Well, it was Balanchine who invited me, but I think Lincoln had brought him to see me perform somewhere.

Rail: Did you see a lot of Balanchine’s work?

Taylor: In the early days, I did, yes.

Rail: Do you see any correspondences between your work and his?

Taylor: Oh, well not really. You know he’s classic ballet or his version of classic, and I’m not. I admire him, especially the way he worked. His rehearsals were so educational to me. Not a moment wasted.

Rail: Did you take his class during that time?

Taylor: I did, yes, occasionally.

Rail: Was it fun? Were you good at it?

Taylor: Not very.

Rail: You must have been divine in the jumps—halfway across the room before you landed!

Taylor: [Laughs.] My heart wasn’t really in it, you know. And I could get by, but I wasn’t a ballet dancer, really.

Rail: When I think of your work and Balanchine’s as being alike, I don’t think of what people are doing. I think of the paths they travel while they do it—the architecture.

Taylor: Yes, the patterns are wonderful, wonderful.

Rail: His architecture clearly comes from the music. Where does yours come from?

Taylor: I think from the music too, but also if there’s a plot, with characters, the architecture has to go along with that, and I sometimes go against the music. I don’t always follow it.

Rail: Do you start with the plot, the music?

Taylor: Oh, there are many ways. Sometimes it’s the plot, sometimes it’s just the music. Sometimes it—oh, many things. It’s never the same, really.

Rail: Do you think the plots are submerged or obvious?

Taylor: Some are pretty clear. Others aren’t. Intentionally.

Rail: Are any of your dances about you?

Taylor: No, never, I don’t think so. I’ve never wanted to do autobiographical dances.

Rail: When I think about your choreography—one dance, all of the dances—it all lives in a kind of continuous present, and also in what I guess I am going to call a “continuous psyche.” Where there are no barriers between id and ego and super ego, or between waking and dreaming. Is your mind at all like that, or is it just what I happen to experience with your work?

Taylor: Sort of. Except I’m not big on Freudian stuff.

Rail: What about Jungian stuff?

Taylor: No Jung, either. Martha Graham liked Jung.

Rail: Tell me about the new pieces that everyone who reads this will go see

Taylor: The recent one is called House of Joy.

Rail: Is that an ironic title?

Taylor: No, a “house of joy” is a whorehouse.

Rail: I get that.

Taylor: I see what you mean. [Laughs.] Well, there are all kinds of joy. It has characters. It’s more a pantomime than a dance, I think. There’s no real dance step in it. It requires acting, at which I must say these dancers are wonderful. We got it done in no time flat.

Rail: Why a whorehouse?

Taylor: Well, that was just the subject. Why? I think—I don’t know. It was something I hadn’t done before.

Rail: You’re going to get in trouble for objectifying women. You think?

Taylor: Well it’s short, so if they don’t like it, it gets over with in a hurry.

Rail: When you are making a new piece—any new piece—is it specific to those dancers?

Taylor: Well it is and it isn’t. I’m certainly aware of their strong points or what qualities they might want to add to their abilities, but I also have to keep in mind that if the dance is any good, it’s going to get learned by a whole other group. So there can’t be anything individualistic set in the choreography—not anything that’s important. There are some dancers who have wonderful quirks, but you can’t transfer them to other people because they’re their own. Everybody is his or her own self, you know. Nobody can look like somebody else, really. If the dance is solid it can stand a lot of interpretations.
Rail: You’re reviving Junction. What was it like to see it again?
Taylor: Oh, well, they do it very well. Junction (made in 1961 to music of J. S. Bach) was an experiment for me to sort of clarify my idea of what was musical in a dance, and I decided that I would try not just to go fast when the music went fast and slow when it went slow, but to complement and sometimes do the opposite.

Rail: Did you feel that you would want to do that again once you tried it?

Taylor: I think it’s affected everything that came after it in that way—the way I think of musicality.

Rail: So you’re proposing that in a dance, or a part of a dance, the movement is in counterpoint to the music.

Taylor: Yes, exactly.

Rail: Are you interested in the technicalities of choreography?

Taylor: Oh sure, you bet. There’s always some kind of flaw in things. But it’s good because then I want to keep going. If I did a perfect dance I think I’d quit, you know? It’s a goal.

SPRING RITES: NAKED, ESPLANADE, ANTIC MEET

originally published in

 

There will be many other nights like this
And I’ll be standing here with someone new
There will be other songs to sing,
Another fall...another spring...
But there will never be another you.

(lyrics by Mack Gordon)

Art works change over time—not because they change, but because we do. This is most clear with paintings, which—with the exception of time-based art made with materials that decay and morph—stay the same. You go to a museum to visit a beloved painting, and lo! You see something unexpected, you understand the scene differently, and it is not because the painting has changed. You have. With music you can encounter this experience while listening to a recording—or when you yourself repeatedly play a piece of music over time, hearing and bringing out different elements. In theater, you can have this relationship with a text. At the movies, or in the sculpture garden, of course you have the same thing as with paintings, recordings, and theater. But with dance! You have the dance, and you have the people in it at any given moment, and then you have, even with the same people, their own variability from performance to performance.

 “Naked: A Living Installation” © Stephanie Berger 2011

And yet. Somehow, over time, seeing the same work with successive generations of dancers, its architecture becomes clear to you, as well as its tone, its character, its world. A platonic notion of the work separate from its passing inhabitants takes residence. You think you know it, and indeed you do have a sense of it apart from any idiosyncrasies of individual interpretation. But still, you can go to the theater one night after decades of seeing it, and can find yourself not so much seeing as understanding in a whole new way. This can also happen quickly, with the same work, with the same cast, in the same week—from one night to the next, something changes. The dance is the same, but you are not.

Another spring. March, City Center, the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Esplanade. Paul Taylor is himself in the house (in his usual back row seat), and so, on opening night, are many of his former dancers. (You can see Carolyn Adams in an old Esplanade on YouTube, in a skittering yet gracious flurry of small gestures and quick steps; and you can see her in the audience. David Grenke, with the company from 1989 to ’96, sits down next to me.) The place is a time machine. There they are, all around me, and there they are, in mind’s eye, still on stage, dancing underneath the current company. Casts in palimpsest. Esplanade has become a recursion, but the dance stays young. It’s still spring’s harbinger.

 Two things stay with me after the season, in the weeks that follow. First, the surprise of the newly revived Orbs, which dates from 1966, especially the surprise of the section called “Spring.” It is so clearly a reading of Graham’s Appalachian Spring, so clear a reminder of where Paul Taylor came from—he’s the son of Martha. As was of course Merce Cunningham, his older sibling, if you will, on that branch of modern dance’s family tree. Paul came after Merce in the Graham company, and went on to dance with Cunningham’s troupe in 1953 and ’54, including a summer at Black Mountain College. Now, half a century and more later, Taylor’s company is presenting a Graham parody of sorts—or at any rate a commentary. So too, later that month, will the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, in its newly revived version of Antic Meet, which Cunningham made in 1958.

That year, Merce famously wore a many armed sweater he sewed together himself from pieces knit by his then-apprentice Valda Setterfield, pulling it up over his head like some kind of bizarre Thurberesque hat. (The role is now danced by Daniel Madoff and Rashaun Mitchell, in alternating casts.) Now, as then, out dance four women in parachutes, who do Grahamesque gestures of heel-of-hand-to forward, tilting forward in a Graham-y way. Odd vestments, strange hat, a small tribe of female followers? The entire work is a series of references to various dance styles—and this, clearly, is a recension of sorts of his preacher role in Appalachian Spring—now a very reluctant Revivalist, trying to escape his little flock. (They look like sheep, a bit, really, in those parachutes, or birds, or pioneer women, or something!)

“ Antic Meet," 1958. Photo by Stephanie Berger

What’s going on in Orbs in the “Venusian Spring” section? There is a wedding scene, repeated twice. The first time, the groom refuses to kiss his blonde dumpling of a bride at the altar, and kisses the preacher, instead. He refuses to consummate the wedding, and the bride’s mother does an angsty little Graham number downstage to our left. Then there is a second wedding. The groom kisses the bride, and they seem set on a course of connubial bliss. There you have it: subtext and text. What one wanted, and what was expected. In general, and by Martha: for let us remember that she was the bride in Appalachian Spring, Erick Hawkins (whom she was to marry) was her Husbandman, and Merce Cunningham (!!!) was the preacher. This, at least, Martha’s boys had in common: a wicked sense of humor.

The other thing that stayed with me from the Taylor season was my new, wholly unwelcome reading of the central, slow section of Esplanade, the one that begins like a version of Doris Humphrey’s Day on Earth, but moves on to everyone crawling around in the middle of a pool of light. One recurrent trope in this movement (you find it again in Taylor’s Dust) is not seeing, but “unseeing.” A dancer—originally Bettie de Jong, tall, slim, the only woman in trousers—walks across the stage. Another smaller woman—a girl, really—repeatedly scurries around her to fling herself down at her feet, as if to stop her.

I’ve seen this many ways before, but never the way I saw it this year: I saw the tall figure walking towards the wings slowly, inexorably, in measured pace, with the other trying so very hard to stop her, hurling herself in her path to keep her from leaving. Not to get her attention, as I’d seen it before—like a child with a parent—but to stop her. From dying. From leaving forever. I’ll never see it any other way again, and I doubt I’ll ever see it without crying, as I did that night. But if you spent the spring, as I did, watching someone progress into the wings, into death, into beyond what can be seen, what else could it mean, and what else can it mean, next year, or the year after that? Don’t leave me, I thought. And thought it again, when Paul Taylor came out, frailer than last year, still so handsome, still so present. Don’t leave me. (Merce left.) You stay, please.

April, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Eiko and Koma’s Naked: A Living Installation. There they are, Butoh-white, bony to the point of emaciation, curled in a bed of black feathers and leaves, in a dim stuffy room curtained in scorched, feather-encrusted muslin. The only light is from above, and from above water drips. They move incrementally, so slowly you can look away and look back and think about something else and not miss a thing, hour after hour. You can come, you can go, you can come back; you can move to a different vantage point. No right way to experience, no wrong way to experience. You might see what I saw: creatures left for eagles to eat for dinner later, dropped into their nest to keep for a midnight feast. Refugees from disaster, manmade or natural. (It happened to be just at the time of the tsunami in Japan, though the piece was made earlier, and had been shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.) That couple in Pompeii, buried alive by lava, their infant cradled between them.

Later in the week, I went back. Again I watched, and saw strangeness. And then I saw familiarity.  I saw a couple sleeping. apart, yet together, touching from time to time as if in reassurance, and echoing each other’s shapes. In separate dreams, in separate hollows of pillows. Long married, long partners, Eiko and Koma sleep; breathe. Apart, together, warm, paralyzed by dreams, waking enough to stir, birds of a feather, in their feather marriage bed, the water ticking down, marking time.

©Nancy Dalva