Paul Taylor - Susan Reiter

“Roses”, “Lines of Loss”, “Company B”
Paul Taylor Dance Company
City Center
New York, NY
March 2, 2007

by Susan Reiter
copyright ©2007, Susan Reiter

The amazing wealth of possibilities that Paul Taylor can evoke through the use of circles was just one of the many lessons in masterful choreography on view during his company’s un-fussy and deeply eloquent opening night program. Also offered for our contemplation and admiration were his confident incorporation of the spare, the calm, the uncluttered amid what is otherwise a rich, layered display of movement invention. Each of these three works offers a masterful display of how sophisticated craftsmanship can imbue a dance with a lingering emotional resonance. Each one reaches a conclusion that seems to encapsulate and ennoble all that has come before.

The plush contemplativeness of “Roses” cast a warmly romantic glow to start the evening off. In this 1985 work, there is a communal link among the five couples — the women in their long stretch black dresses and men in ash-grey tank tops and pants — that is consistently reaffirmed by their languidly sweeping circling formations. In between these harmonious loopings, individual pairs claim their central moment, celebrating the private joys of their shared connection. They do this through springy, often athletic moves as well as tender, reflective moments of contact — a gentle pat that traces up the side of a lover’s body — reminiscent of the vocabulary of Taylor’s landmark Baroque works. But here, the lush Wagner score — the “Siegfried Idyll” — has inspired a particularly unhurried, in-the-moment tone of sensual delight. These couples are caught in youthful vigor — some are giddy with excitement, others more serene — but all seem to inhabit a golden moment that will last forever.

As if to confirm and celebrate that fact, just when the five pairs have settled into their cozy reclining positions as the Wagner music softly concludes, the coda (to Heinrich Baermann’s ardently serene “Adagio for Clarinet and Strings”) brings on a couple in gleaming white who represent the apotheosis and summation of all we have seen before. Lisa Viola and Michael Trusnovec let this gorgeously unhurried duet unspool as though time were infinite. They became iconic lovers, who know, understand and accept each other completely. The final moments, as they settled into their intimate reclining embrace while the other five couples quietly made their way forward to surround and echo their pose, provide a conclusion that, in its poignant simplicity, is as gentle as a sigh.

In “Roses,” Taylor worked with a single continuous score and brilliantly mined its agitated crescendos and soothing expanses to shape sections within an ongoing whole. The other two works on the program exemplified the suite form that he has often favored, in which he assembles free-standing musical selections — whether from a single composer/source or a collection of them — into a composition with its own ingenious logic.

“Lines of Loss,” the evening’s world premiere, features brief musical pieces (primarily for strings) ranging from the 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut through such contemporary masters as Arvo Part and Alfred Schnittke. Taylor has selected nine of the tracks from a Nonesuch CD titled “Early Music” and shaped them seamlessly into a haunting, somber exploration of the permutations of loss, with hints of religious fervor.

With the tone set by the stately, spare Machaut, the dancers enter in a subdued processional, hands clasped low, tracing a diagonal from upstage left before winding into a circle and separating into two lines to reveal Lisa Viola, who perhaps is the primary bearer of the communal loss. Her clasped hands and frequent kneeling positions — at one point she performs a wrenching twisting turn on her knees — suggest supplication. She could be a condemned prisoner pleading in the face of heartless authority.

Her loss of hope gives way to Robert Kleinendorst’s Type-A, driven figure, trapped and going nowhere fast as he does pushups, runs in place and glances at his watch, while the others are lunging in a circle around him. Taylor picks up on the underlying tension in the pulsating Jack Body music. Eventually, he finds himself surrounded by four vengeful furies who seal his doom and drag him off towards the wings. Next it is Julie Tice and Michelle Fleet who suffer entrapment, unable to break free form the tight space left by the four men who surround them. When Michael Trusnovec is revealed for the next section, he is a broken, shaky figure, whose hands tremble and whose body remains bent. Accompanied by the spare strains of Arvo Part, he achingly evokes loss of vigor, loss of independence, perhaps even loss of sight, as he effortfully stumbles his way off stage.

The section that features Richard Chen See and James Samson is introduced by genially gamboling couples, and at first they seem like typical Taylor feisty, robust comrades as they playfully butt heads. But what is lost here is perhaps trust, because their interaction turns aggressively hostile. Annmaria Mazzini follows as a figure of desperation, arching through a backbend to the floor, crawling, seemingly abandoned. Her loss of hope, or perhaps of dignity, is accompanied by Schnittke’s heartbreaking music, which continues as the culminating duet for Viola and Trusnovec has then entwining and overlapping their bodies with artful desperation. One senses these are two people striving to remain together while being ripped apart, and their heroic struggle is in vain, and they are left to drift off to opposite wings, wanly blowing a kiss in each other’s direction.

In the brilliant and devastating conclusion, that lasts perhaps a minute or less, the dancers (with crimson fabric now draped over their white costumes) repeat their diagonal processional from the opening, but one by one they crumple and collapse, forming a ghostly trail that Viola, the only one to remain standing as she arrives downstage, leaves behind. She is both the last one standing and the bearer of all their collective loss, the embodiment — and reminder — of their suffering.

The ensemble transitions between the individual sections are as eloquent and significant as anything else in “Lines of Loss.” Taylor weaves his relatively small cast through circles that, unlike “Roses” do not celebrate so much as confirm the participants’ mutual entrapment. At other times, they enter in intersecting or overlapping lines, but always the soloist or focal pair of each section is yielded up in wondrously organic manner from the ensemble, claiming the upstage center territory and framed in soft glowing light while the other remain in muted shadows. Jennifer Tipton’s lighting design is stunning, and integral, throughout, creating a place where darkness is always encroaching, and any brighter moments are fated to give way to the gloom. Santo Loquasto’s simple white costumes are textured body suits with a hint of a ruffled half-skirt for the women, and some layering at the waist for the men. His vast backdrop of striated patterns looms large over the proceedings, suggesting everything from rivulets of water to a distant landscape. It is both hopeful — suggesting an open expanse that the onstage community never finds — and sobering, as it hints at eternity. “Lines of Loss” is not just another mature and profound Taylor masterwork, as well as another exceptional collaboration for this longstanding team.

Taylor, Tipton and Loquasto were certainly at the top of their form in 1991 when it all came together in the now-classic “Company B,” the exuberant and poignant suite to Andrews Sisters songs, which closed the evening brilliantly. There were many newcomers in the featured parts. James Samson, so often a figure of nobility in other works, here delivered a zany and delicious performance in “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh” as the delighted nerd whom the girls all crave. Francisco Graciano, the newest addition to the company’s male roster, brought a welcome sense of danger — as well as the requisite macho sex appeal — to “Tico Tico,” and Julie Tice was touching as the one who always remains alone and a bit apart when everyone else is happily paired up, expressing her yearnings with simple eloquence in “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” For all the fun-filled swing-time activity that grabs our focus, the dancers never let us lose sight of the wartime realities looming in the distance. As ever, one oculd marvel at how, for all the brilliance of “Company B”’s individual set pieces, its opening and closing sections are as exceptional in their own way. These frozen-in-time figures emerge, and are gradually energized, as silhouettes emerging from the shadows, and as the final note of music is heard, they have eased back into that darkness.

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