"De Suenos (of dreams)", "De Suenos Que Se Repiten (of recurring dreams)" and "Beloved Renegade"
Paul Taylor Dance Company
Eisenhower Theater
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
March 27, 2009
by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright 2009 by Alexandra Tomalonis
Paul Taylor's latest masterpiece, the most recent in a very long line of masterpieces, is "Beloved Renegade," set to Poulenc's requiem, "Gloria" (the same score Kenneth MacMillan used for his ballet of that name). Taylor has choreographed requiems before, and this one reminded me of past dances, especially "Esplanade" and "Roses." I've always seen "Esplanade" as Taylor's farewell to his own career as a dancer; "Roses" was dedicated to Edwin Denby, then recently deceased; and "Beloved Renegade" was commissioned to the memory of James Harper Marshall by his wife and daughter.
Marshall's death notice said that he had been a "skin diver" (were he and Taylor pals or competitors during Taylor's college diving career?), the (honorary) president emeritus of his alma mater, Hofstra, and a patron of the arts. It doesn't say that Marshall admired the poetry of Walt Whitman, but I'd bet the farm he did. As "Roses" was a beautiful bouquet of black roses to Denby, the choreography lyrical and poetic (as was Denby's writing), yet with gentle acrobatics, saluting Denby's youthful interest in gymnastics, "Beloved Renegade" uses six Whitman poems as springboards; their titles, and a few lines indicating the poems' content, are in the program notes, and clear in the choreography.
Within about two seconds, before the dancers have barely moved, you know you're about to watch a masterpiece. The engine starts churning the minute the curtain rises to show a man, standing perfectly still, with the small ensemble behind him. The dancers are dressed in heavenly pastels (by Santo Loquasto) and Jennifer Tipton's lighting bathes them in an otherworldly glow. Laura Halzack is a calm, serene guardian angel figure who seems to guide Michael Trusnovec through life, and prepares him for death. The ballet is a series of episodes, each illustrating a different poem. "I bend to the dying lad" shows Trusnovec nursing dying soldiers, as Whitman did in the Civil War; "Come children, come my boys and girls," has the Taylor dancers playing. "...for love — sweet love —but praise" is a loving duet for Trusnovec and Amy Young, with Halzack hovering protectively. At the end, Trusnovec bids a tender farewell to each dancer, and then is borne offstage, aloft.
The work accepts death, doesn't rail against it, as "Esplanade" did. Now that dance is done as an exuberant, playful romp, but there was anger in it when it was new, and unbearable sadness in the mysterious center section where Bettie De Jong, dressed in pants (all the other women wore dresses) crawls on the floor and sobs. In the final movement, the dancers hurled themselves to the floor, angry again, but rose to dance another day. In contrast, "Beloved Renegade" accepts death as something inevitable, but beautiful. The dancers swirl around the stage in ever-changing patterns. Why a simple movement — such as dancers doing a single turn with one arm upraised, then falling to the floor — should tear one's guts out is nearly as great a mystery as life and death, but such is Taylor's undiminished power (at 78) as a dancemaker.
The other two works on the program showed that he is all too human. Taylor has always had a scampish strain, and both "De Suenos (of dreams)", "De Suenos Que Se Repiten (of recurring dreams)" are drawn from the same bin as "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".Both works look like crazy mixed up tourist images from a trip to Mexico -- a Sun goddess, a half-naked man wearing deer's antlers. And then there's the drag queen and the man with the machete. Both works show Taylor's craft, but are built from filler and images from past works. It was a long wait for "Beloved Renegade," but one well worth it.
Photo: Julie Tice, Michael Trusnovec, and Orion Duckstein
by Wiley Price
