A chance to see a legend dance

FAMED AMERICAN choreographer Paul Taylor, evergreen age 86, will be leading his dance company through its steps on October 18 and 19 in the grand finale to Bangkok’s 18th International Festival of Dance & Music.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company will present a separate programme of three choreography pieces each day – “Black Tuesday”, “Le Sacre du Printemps” and “Cascade” on October 18; “Mercuric Tidings”, “Beloved Renegade” and “Promethean Fire” on October 19.

“Black Tuesday” takes its name from October 29, 1929, the day the US stock market crashed, setting off the Great Depression of the 1930s. Taylor’s dance looks at the way the Depression was viewed through popular songs and Hollywood films, as well as how it was actually experienced in the lives of down-and-out Americans.

Taylor creates an engaging mix of joy and sorrow out of the songs of the era. Wearing period-appropriate costumes, the dancers perform in front of iconic images from New York, people left homeless, others queuing for food and jobs. 

“Le Sacre du Printemps” is a suspenseful drama set to a piano-duet version of Stravinsky’s groundbreaking score for “The Rite of Spring”. Perhaps Taylor’s most complex work, it weaves together three narratives: a detective caper based on Hollywood movies from the 1930s and 1940s, a dance company whose actions serve as parallels to the movie gangsters, and the original Nijinsky version of “Le Sacre”, which offers a larger picture of ritual sacrifice and death that are paralleled in the other two story lines. 

The evening ends with “Cascade”, an elegant, abstract work set to the music of JS Bach, in which men are reverential towards women. The dance features highly energetic, free and open movement with complex patterns.

The following night’s show opens with the pure dance piece “Mercuric Tidings”, an aerobically challenging dance set to Franz Schubert’s first two symphonies.

Next is “Beloved Renegade”, set to Francis Poulenc’s soaring “Gloria”. It’s based on the poems of Walt Whitman, who created a fresh vision of ordinary citizens as heroic, as well as a conception of cosmic consciousness drawn from Asian philosophical traditions.

The choreography makes specific reference to the poems of Whitman, as well as to his biography, especially to his work nursing dying soldiers during the American Civil War, and to the fact that his health was broken by this war work. The dance refers also to Whitman’s views of love, children, community and death – views that Taylor shares and celebrates.

The company brings down the curtain with “Promethean Fire”. Set to three works by Bach orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski, it examines a kaleidoscope of emotions. All of the dancers, in black, weave in and out of intricate patterns that mirror the way emotions weave through life.

The title refers to the Prometheus of Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to the primitive mortals on Earth. This is the first dance that Taylor choreographed after the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, and “Promethean Fire” has been widely interpreted as a response to that event – disciplined order gives way and people collapse and then rise again – although Taylor has refused to be pinned down about this. 

Paul Taylor is a colossus of the American dance scene, casting a long shadow of influence. The Los Angeles Times summed up his career thus: “Paul Taylor served the first generation of modern-dance pioneers as a performer and then helped create and redefine the second as a choreographer.”

At 86, the unstoppable Taylor continues to underline his contribution to the American modern dance scene – and the world’s – with his remarkable work.

His company is one of the oldest touring companies in American modern dance and has performed in more than 500 cities and 62 countries. In fact it still spends more than half of each performing season touring American cities. The company also presents yearly seasons at Lincoln Centre in New York, a rare feat.

Called “the greatest choreographer alive” by the New York Times and “one of the most singular and searching imaginations of our time”, Paul Taylor has always riveted his audiences. He creates magic, whether investing everyday movement with breathtaking beauty or unforgettable archetypes like “a desperate woman hungering for love at a dive in Buenos Aires, a fundamentalist preacher with a chequered past, and an ageing eccentric dancer performing a grotesque dance”.

With equal panache Taylor has led his company into the new millennium with his fingers firmly on the pulse of time, his experiences finding a reflection in his effortless choreography. These aren’t just dances, but a comment on the times we live in, the people and their lives.

Taylor’s genius has been recognised with many awards, including the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and in his homeland an Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award for “Speaking in Tongues”, a National Medal of Arts presented by then-President Clinton, the Algur H Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Award of Merit.

Taylor, who originally performed in the companies of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham and George Balanchine, founded his own in 1954. The Paul Taylor Dance Company is today considered one of world’s foremost modern-dance troupes. Taylor has over the past six decades established a repertory of 144 dances and is constantly adding more. The dancers and choreographers who have emerged from his company include Twyla Tharp, David Parsons, Laura Dean, Dan Wagoner, Elizabeth Keen, Christopher Gillis, Senta Driver, Amy Marshall and Lila York.

The “enfant terrible” of modern ballet, Taylor has never shied away from subjects generally ignored by choreographers. His cutting-edge work, with its humorous touches and compelling voice, has created an enviable body of work. 

Bangkok’s 18th International Festival of Dance & Music is sponsored by the Crown Property Bureau, Bangkok Bank, Bangkok Dusit Medical Services, BMW Thailand, B Grimm Group, Dusit Thani Bangkok, Indorama Ventures, Ministry of Culture, Nation Multimedia Group, Singha Corp, Thai Airways International and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

 

Modern Prometheus

- The Paul Taylor Dance Company is performing on October 18 and 19 at the Thailand Cultural Centre.

- Seats are now on sale at www.ThaiTicketMajor.com and (02) 262 3191.

- Find out more at www.BangkokFestivals.com.