"Sunset," "Private Domain," "Cascade"
Paul Taylor Dance Company
City Center
New York NY
February 28, 2010
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2010 Carol Pardo
Itinerant magicians surprise their audiences by pulling rabbits from a hat. Where Paul Taylor and his company are concerned, the surprises are the dances:131 and counting.
This performance started on a high note, one of the highest in the repertory. "Sunset" is a meditation on courtship, flirtation, succor, loss, death and grief. War hangs over this vernal gathering in a park, though it is explicit only in the men’s costumes with their khaki shirts and red berets. Every interaction among the six men and four women in the cast is transient; some are tinged with desperation. The afternoon’s events will live on only in memory. Eran Bugge caught this exactly as she clutched a beret dropped by one of the parting soldiers. Her gaze turned inward; her face froze. Death was closing in.
The duet for two men that comprises the second movement of "Sunset" is one of the most moving essays on friendship in dance. It begins with the two men falling backward in slow motion. Michael Trusnovic and Robert Kleinendorst executed it breathtakingly perfectly. As they hit the ground, one person could be heard clapping gently, speaking for us all. In their performances, and for the first time, this duet took on overtones of "don’t ask, don’t tell." Pairing the dancers off into five couples seems too neat; war is anything but.
In contrast, "Public Domain," first produced in 1968 and not seen in New York since the early 1970’s, is an antic romp. Ten dancers, wearing leotards in saturated colors borrowed from a rainbow, dance over, around, and through a sound collage by John Herbert McDowell, assembled from material in the public domain. The components, most lasting less than a minute, run the gamut from "Swan Lake" to W.C. Fields on whale blubber to "Medea" to cucumber sandwiches. The piece is too long, and seems light years away from the variety and depth of "Sunset," but it does provide solos for three women that stand out.
Eran Bugge’s solo is danced with her abs—short, witty and on the music. Julie Tice fights against being pulled toward the wings, one large scale turn after another. Annmaria Mazzini spends most of "Public Domain" on her side with her back to the audience, a curvaceous fuchsia bump. But when she stands up, her solo, full of constant extensions and slow turns with rock solid balance, is a tribute to her strength and concentration and to Taylor’s love of the contradictory.
"Cascade," to selections from Bach's concertos for piano, has always reminded me of an 18th century formal garden, Versailles perhaps. It is full of diagonals, like paths through topiary. The vocabulary is all Taylor, but restrained. Jumps are most often low and tend to turn in on themselves rather than soar. On of the pleasures of repertory is seeing how the same vocabulary can be adjusted to the specific world on stage. Another is watching dancers grow within it. Amy Young, in the woman's solo, has found her way in with a combination of serenity and scale.
Welcome back to all.
