Also Playing is a salute to Vaudeville, and to dance.
We were only able to see and review the Sunday matinee of the Paul Taylor Dance Company in Great Barrington. It was booked on the weekend that marked the fifth anniversary of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. The dance company was also marking its fifth appearance in Great Barrington. The two are a perfect match.
The contemporary dance of Paul Taylor is not at all like the other well known names from that discipline. His work is far from the emotional Sturm und Drang of Martha Graham, or the abstract nature of Merce Cunningham’s creations which are akin to throwing tai chi sticks in the air every evening, and then performing what ever combinations happen to fall. Some call it art.
It’s no secret that I love the zippy, naughty and highly entertaining pieces churned out by Taylor, an artist whose choreography is based not on the agony and ecstacy but on the foibles and realities of real life. If it has a bit of a gay sensibility, then it is muy simpatico; It is in this special brand of humor that we recognize ourseves in his works.
Take the piece that opened the program, Also Playing, which was “dedicated to all vaudevillians, especially those who went on no matter what.” It held the children in the audience (many dance students themselves) spellbound. It is one of two new dances featured in the company’s City Center season this past March.
Also Playing
Taylor’s choreography career actually came about because of a triumph-over-tragedy incident in 1974 when the dancer collapsed on stage from illness and exhaustion, effectively ending his dancing career. Within a year he had crafted his first dance, Esplanade, and the rest will be forever written in the history of dance.
Also Playing takes this theme and makes great entertainment out of it. Set to music by bel canto composer Donizetti, there are a dozen or so acts, each loosely based on a famous ballet. There is a dying swan being supported by the three graces in mourning veils. The garlands of flowers that mark village celebrations in Giselle become litter in another episode.
Balanchine does not escape the mockery as a soldier in grotesquely oversized epaulets dances with a lady in a gigantic balloon gown that had enough ruffles and petticoats for an entire company of can can dancers.
Meanwhile a custodian with a broom is on duty, watching the proceedings with a mixture of fascination and dismay. Throughout, behind an upstage scrim, dancers dart to and fro, as if crossing over for their next entrance.
The highlight of the piece has to be the guy dressed up as a horse with a tail and mane who seems to be a specialty act. Or maybe it was the woman bullfighter taking on three cowardly bulls. Or the parade of dancers being led about by a woman with an American flag that called to mind NYCB’s Stars and Stripes.
All in good fun, and all danced to perfection, since it is not easy to dance like a dying swan when you are anything but that in real life.
Also on the program was Brandenburgs from 1988 which was contemporary classical set to Bach’s 6th Brandenburg Concerto.
The final dance was Piazzolla Caldera, a revival of the popular piece from 1997 that celebrates Tangos and the music of Astor Piazolla. All twelve members of the touring company performed, and it is interesting to note that it consists of 7 men and 5 women. Throughout the evening, when the choreography called for six couples, one was invariably same-sex.
Paul Taylor may be 80 years old, but he is far from stuck in Petipa and Diaghilev formulas. His dancers represent the real world.
Perhaps that is why, on the weekend of its fifth anniversary the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center chose not only a cutting edge dance company, but one that is continuing to grow with the times.
It may have been the birthday of the Mahaiwe, but it was the community that received the gift, one of great dance that will be long remembered.
Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA on May 29 and 30, 2010.
I have composed the music to a grand total of two ballets, only one of which has been choreographed and performed (Darrel Pucciarello’s production of Dracula). It was a satisfying experience that left me wanting more. But seeing the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Mahaiwe has made me ravenous for more interaction with choreographers and dancers. Here’s why:
Within the first thirty of seconds of this performance , I learned that (1) the language of movement is broader and deeper than I had dared to imagine it could be, (2) virtuoso dancing is an even greater aesthetic and athletic miracle than I had realized, and (3) there is no music I could write or imagine writing that could approach either the physical or imaginative limits of choreography and dance as I understand them to be after receiving instruction from the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
I’m sorry I didn’t see Sunday’s matinee.
David Noel Edwards
Canaan, New York