The Human Complaint

"Brief Encounters", "Three Dubious Memories", "Also Playing"
Paul Taylor Dance Company
Eisenhower Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
March 24, 2011

by George Jackson
copyright 2011 by George Jackson

Can one cut Paul Taylor up into three parts - teller of tales, dance maker and music user? No artist is ultimately divisible, but let me try temporarily in respect to the three pieces his company brought to
Washington. As author, he likes to juxtapose horseplay, slapstick and the sly, the subtle. His choreography has substance - it is flexibly tenacious like top notch cotton. Dancers can wear the movement comfortably, and the company's current crop does so with a distinctly sexy elegance and ease. Music is approached practically. Taylor appreciates the support it gives his stories and dances - it is there to serve. Do the Taylor stories and movement, though, make a point?

"Brief Encounters" is set in what could be a baths - grand but gloomy. The young adults who scavenge its corridors have stripped to leathery black next-to-nothings that simultaneously reveal and restrict. Mostly they pursue each other in one-on-one, two-to-one or group games of lust. Bonding is basic and, as the title proclaims, its duration is brief. No two encounters are quite alike and although Taylor seems to relish the variety, it is the palette of feelings experienced by the participants that the choreography pinpoints. Like eager children sometimes and then, instead, like horny adolescents the participants plan seductions, maximize pleasure, enjoy their winnings or dismiss loss. Adult behavior, a rare occurrence, is usually the painful, lonely sort. Amazing, though, how precisely anger, guile, desire, jealousy, impatience and other attitudes appear and almost instantly are gone. 

In "Brief Encounters", Taylor doesn't moralize pointedly. He just presents the facts about humanity with a smile and a shrug. In "Three Dubious Memories", he is more specific and philosophic. Three of his characters are individuals. Coming together they form a series of triangular relationships but not even a god and his angels are able to solve these triangles' equations. All the human characters see their situation differently. The differences are extreme to an absurd extent - slapstick is called for. Yet somehow, inevitably, the humans continue to relate. It is the immortals, having failed to guide the free-willed mortals, who go mad - at least that's how I read this Taylor story with its moral - tolerance for mankind and pity perhaps for mankind's impotent god.  

Taylor the author calls the god character Choirmaster and Taylor the choreographer has him slip through symbolic poses - that of Rodin's "Thinker" thinking, of the god Mercury mediating, of the Buddha contemplating. The mortals, when not slapstick acting, dance plainly with a bit of a country twang. "Dubious Memories" is easy to take, amusing, but also - because it strikes a serious chord - touching. 

The purest fun was "Also Playing",  a tribute to entertainers i.e., dancers of all sorts. Included  are an Anna Pavlova / Dying Swan ballerina with a Martha Graham / Lamentation corps,  a group of waltzers, gypsies, Spanish heel dancers, a pair of flattish Egyptians, and other types from "vaudeville" i.e., history. Eventually, the stagehand guy gets to dance, so this remembrance of entertainments past ends with a nugget of nostalgia. All the different dance techniques, even though tweaked, make this a very dancy work. The substantive strength of Taylor movement guards the diverse acts from seeming flimsy and every vaudevillian, from Pavlova en pointe with bent knees to the kindly stripper, has a work ethic - not holding back.  

Taylor used three different composers for this program, one of whom was also served. For "Brief Encounters" it was orchestrated Debussy, more robust and linked than the original  "Children's Corner" piano pieces. For "Also Playing" it was very aptly some music from theater history - excerpts from Donizetti operas. Four of Peter Elyakim Taussig's "Five Enigmas" are the music for "Dubious Memories" and the "Enigmas" title might also have suited the choreography. The actions and motions of Taylor's characters add richness to Taussig's score. 

Especially eye catching among the Taylor company's dancers were Amy Young, James Samson, Laura Halzak and Michael Trusnovec. Young's combination of vulnerability and tenacity as the mortal woman of "Dubious Memories", the one "in Red", was striking. Samson's brave stoicism as the god figure, the "Choirmaster" of "Dubious Memories", was ever so human. Halzak in "Also Playing" did not do Anna Pavlova an injustice. Also in "Also Playing", Trusnovec was classic elegance personified while just standing aside and watching another dancer in the spotlight - not that he wasn't fascinating too when mobile in this piece. In "Brief Encounters" he was disturbingly agile. Taylor's characters have facets!