Paul Taylor Dance Company, City Center, March 3-15, 1998

Dance Magazine, August, 1998 by Doris Hering

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY CITY CENTER MARCH 3-15, 1998 REVIEWED BY DORIS HERING

Not many choreographers have the courage and the insight to handle themes dealing with the human condition, especially with its dark side. Martha Graham did so, and in the process she created a vividly stylized dance language. Paul Taylor has extended that language principally by taking it into the air; and while Graham built tension and then found ingenious ways to resolve it, Taylor has a self-renewing momentum. Rather than making a dance, he seems to discover its initial fount of energy and then goes on to shape that energy. His dramatic insights reach us by the most natural and convincing of routes.

In his premiere, The Word, an underlying frenzy sends the dancers boiling into the air, then tosses them to the ground or freezes them into robots. Every so often they line up to pray, suggesting the religious cults that bedevil today's world.

Santo Loquasto has clad both men and women in the suits of little boys, circa 1915. This gives them anonymity and an old-world innocence that contrasts with the serpentine presence of Lisa Viola, who dives and darts among them. Despite her brilliance, she seems remote from the others, her influence over them not especially convincing. The role was perhaps inspired by Taylor's own portrayal of Lucifer in Graham's Embattled Garden, but the interpretation lacked Taylor's sly wit.

Occasionally, Jennifer Tipton's forceful lighting cast huge cruciform shadows on the backdrop. David Israel's score also had its flashes of drama. But the power of The Word was in the choreography, so strong that it seemed to thicken the air and force the dancers to dare their way through it.

The air was also thickened, this time by smoke, at the outset of Taylor's Piazzolla Caldera ("Piazzolla Cauldron"), a New York premiere. As the smoke idled upward, a knot of seedy men watched some women in limp chiffon dresses designed by Loquasto. The women also eyed the men. As they erupted into action, I found Taylor's use of the Astor Piazzolla tangos, plus additions by Jerzy Peterburshsky, to be more athletic than erotically wired. Only Francie Huber, in a thigh-slapping solo, and Patrick Corbin, locking horns with Viola, had the requisite bite.

It's strange, almost frightening, to watch a group of people sending forth ugliness from a beautiful place. This is the atmosphere in Taylor's Last Look, with its mirrored underworld designed by Alex Katz. The participants begin as a pile of bodies, and they return to this eerie formation. In the interim they peel away one by one and throw themselves about the space as though eternally damned. Donald York's score for Last Look is a sensitive piece of musical realization. It adds discipline to what might otherwise become pure melodrama.

Taylor and Voltaire could have struck up a fine friendship. While both respect tragedy, they are naturally adept at irony. Watching Taylor's Danbury Mix, also revived for this season, I kept recalling those countless war memorials that preside over virtually every American town square. Abetted by the music of Charles Ives, who could make a parade sound as though it were going enthusiastically to hell, TayIor's townspeople celebrate while Miss Liberty, danced with hilarious fastidiousness by Heather Berest, picks her way among them. They cavort with her or utterly ignore her; and gradually Taylor makes us realize that this happens in every town square, around every lonely war memorial, every year.

As a performing entity, the Paul Taylor Dance Company radiates generosity. While individual dancers have ample opportunity to shine, they never do so at the expense of the ensemble. At the out]et, I found the men more impressive than the women, perhaps because Taylor prefers substantial-looking men formed in his own image, while the women are elfin.

Closest to Taylor's image is Thomas Patrick, who possesses an engaging sense of adventure in every role he explores. Corbin has an exciting edge and speed, while Richard Chen See and Huber have grown into virtuosi simultaneously endowed with dramatic presence.

The demands that Taylor makes, not only on his dancers' skills but on their emotional resources, do indeed set him and the company apart from a good many of today's artistic entities. Not only apart, but above.