Dance Performance Top-Notch Treat
Paul Taylor Dance Company Monday, Oct. 18, Beasley Coliseum in Pullman
Some artistic efforts appeal to our emotions and leave us happy and aesthetically pleased. Other efforts are complex and layered with subtext. Paul Taylor creates dances of the latter type - appealing but also provocative and stimulating, seldom simply pretty.
Paul Taylor brought three dances to Pullman for a performance Monday night that showcased his range as a choreographer. The full house showed its appreciation for a top-notch night of dance with a standing ovation, which is not standard procedure for Pullman audiences.
Of the three works on the program, Taylor’s “The Word” offered the most interesting ideas. All but one of the dozen dancers were dressed in knickers with suspenders, white shirts and ties - regimented, genderless, toeing the corporate line. As they danced onto the stage, they fell into step, never deviating from the set pattern. Enter, the female devil figure, dressed in a reptile-like green leotard, dancing almost improvisationally. She’s the devil of non-conformity, of chaos, of exploration.
When a dancer got out of step with the regiment, the other workers brought that dancer back into lockstep. Where this conformity often is comforting and familiar, Taylor choreographed it to appear awkward, almost ridiculous at times.
While Taylor isn’t entirely literal with his works, he likes to make a statement. “The Word” could be looking at the regimentation imposed by corporations on workers, or it could be speaking to formalized religion, or both. That’s one of the strengths of Taylor’s dances, they tend to work on at least a couple of intellectual levels.
Another of this veteran choreographer’s strengths is his sophisticated use of movement. Too much modern dance relies on form and use of space at the expense of musicality. Taylor marries movement to music and when the music changes tone or tempo, Taylor’s movements make the transition seamlessly. Watching this happen was one of the joys of “Piazzolla Caldera,” Taylor’s nod to the popular tango.
Little of Taylor’s dance, set to new music by Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Peterburshsky, was actually a tango. Rather, the choreographer drew from dance styles ranging from jazz to Eastern European folk dance to Latin movements to assemble an erotic, captivating, and yes, fun, 25-minute piece.
Modern dance tends to be androgynous - in costume, in the roles danced, in movement. But in “Piazzolla Caldera,” Taylor let the women be women and the men be men. The women, dressed to tango in frilly short dresses and heels, teased the macho men. They flirted, circled, and tempted each other from a distance. Then, paired up, they danced as though in a ballroom, they did jazz, they did acrobatics, all the while engaged in a thinly veiled mating dance. The music was beautiful and interesting and Taylor matched it with his dancemaking that was both sensual and sweet.
The least complex and most purely pleasing dance of the evening was “Arden Court,” which opened the program. Taylor created “Arden Court” in 1981 as a pairing of modern dance and classical music. Although not as challenging as the other works, “Arden Court” nonetheless offers a great example of juxtaposing new movement on old music.
Initially one might think that setting six men dressed only in Lycra tights dancing to formal symphonic music would be too jarring; that the dancers would seem too naked on stage. That was not the case here. Soon, the costuming seemed irrelevant. To have thrust at you the very aspects you would least expect paired with classical music - buff, barely dressed men, acrobatics, movement done while lying on the floor - made the dance much more interesting.
This was the second appearance of the Paul Taylor Dance Company in the area; the company first appeared in 1996, also at Beasley. Let us hope that not only will the 68-year-old Taylor continue making new dances, but that he will return and bring them to dance fans in the Inland Northwest. Monday night’s performance was a real treat.