Paul Taylor Dance Company - New York CityCenter - 10^th March 2007

 by Luis Cardador Meinertz

With a career that spans for 54 years and an envious array of awards, the Paul Taylor Dance Company returned to New York in March for another season to showcase the magnificent breadth of Mr Taylor's repertoire, packing 18 works, including a world premiere and a NY premiere, into 17 performances.

Among the line-up performed at the delightful and historical neo-moorish New York City Centre (where the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo were one of the first ballet companies to start performing  there regularly and where the New York City Ballet resided until 1968) were some of the company's most beloved works: Aureole (a work acquired by the Royal Danish Ballet in 1968, the first time another company did so of a Taylor work), the romantic Roses, Company B, the sexy Arden Court (an opportunity for Mr Taylor to display his set of tall, strong, yet sensitive male dancers, a soft spot of his which often acts as an homogenizing factor in many of his works), the inferno-inspired Dante Variations, Sunset (an elegy of soldiers loving and dying), a Book of Beasts (created in 1971 was later to become a performance vehicle for Nureyev), Sunset (a reflection on war and peace) and a Banquet of Vultures (a macabre depiction of war where he denounces imperialism). In addition to the New York premiere of Troilus and Cressida (reduced), inspired by the famed Shakespeare work, Taylor presented the second new work of the season - Lines of Loss -, described in the programme as a contemplative work set to music spanning seven centuries, from Guillaume de Machaut to Arvo Part and Schnittke.

The contemplative mode, introduced by a circling ensemble of devotees, clad in skintight white bodysuits, soon gives way to a series of eight solos and duets evoking loss, lamentation or despair, set agansit a powerful and ingenious backdrop of weavelike design, formed by dishevelled black threads.

The ensembles are interweaven with dark, individual and collective portraits of loss, describing the alienation from life, loss of a friendship or love. On one occasion a man, waving his hands before his eyes as to confirm he cannot see, scratches himself compulsively and looks desparate in the face of small daily rituals, such as a work-out in the gym, which seem to take over his being. On another, a pair of dancers enter the stage arm in arm, but quickly they are shoving one another around, in rehearsed moves. Here, Taylor manages to introduce some funny moments, which he always seems to do well and with ease, but as the work unfolds we are soon back to the masochistic passages, a shtick commonly employed in his later works.

The most interesting moment of the work takes place between Lisa Viola and Trusnovec, who dance the central duet, with arms intertwined, as lovers supporting each other with a sense of impeding doom, voluntary splitting from each other at the end, leaving the stage from opposite ends of the satge blowing a kiss to each other.

Before we get a chance to make up our minds about the central message of this work, we are surprised with an abrupt end, with the return of the devotees to the sound of bells, now draped in blood-stained scarlet cloaks. They lie down in what resembles a river of blood, a line of acceptance.

Before Lines of Loss, we were treated to a re-staging of Polaris, created in 1976, in which Taylor gives the audience a chance to observe the multiple effects that music, lighting and individual interpretations by the performers have on a single dance. This is achieved by having a step by step repeat of the first choreography performed by different dancers and to different music in the second section. We end up with a sense of two textures, shades, and not least, significance.

The stage is dominated by a glassless cubic from where the dancers emerge and to which they eventually return in the end, before being replaced by the performers of the second section. While the first half is all lightness, with dancers free to explore the space within and outside the see-through cubic, crossing it from all sides and in different directions, the second half assumes a darker, more serious mood. We see a cob-web of bodies, exploring the stage in a cob-web of movements, assuming the role of the trump card on a game of cards. In fact, the choreography resembles a game of Four in Line, of asymmetric symbolism: darkness and light, hard-hitting phrases and soft and fluid movements.

From this and other Taylor works we get a sense of Mr Taylor's exploration of opposite and reverses, backs and froes and parallel dimensions. Illusions-savvy Taylor recurringly tries to inject order into the disorder he creates while deconstructing.

Last came Promethean Fire, a work inspired by the play Othello set to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which many imply to be - despite Mr Taylor's insistent denials - an observation of the September 11 events. Like many of his earlier works, Promethean Fire was danced with gusto by a fantastic company of dancers, led by Lisa Viola (a Taylor darling now promoted to assistant to the Rehearsal Director) and Mark Trusnovec.

The evening ended as it started, with a hushed thrill of anticipation and awe for  a man who claims no interest in music, but whose works transpire a vibrant, focused musicality, whose phrases remain fresh and topical today, whose light interpretation - which once earned him a blank page review from an upset critic - do not minimize its significance.

With more than 125 works to his credit, blessed with a shower of critical acclaim, an envious career and an adoring audience, one big question remains: is there a future for Mr Taylor's company when he is gone, or will we see a repeat of Martha Graham's fate? Some will, justifiably, insist on borrowing from his vocabulary, but while that may be possible, one cannot delegate genius; and has someone has said, all Taylor works have one thing in common - they are all Paul Taylor: individual, distinct; unrepeatable things.