Up-and-coming choreographer Paul Taylor, who one day became an American modern dance giant, performed a full evening of his original work in October 1957. He was 27 years old and was a dancer at Martha Graham’s company. “Seven New Dances” at night was a series of seven short-moving experiments. It wasn’t immediately clear if they could really be described as dance.
One, Taylor and another dancer remained completely stationary in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The inspiration was John Cage’s song for the same period, in which the musician (David Tudor) sat in front of the piano without playing the notes. As Taylor’s work progressed, people flowed out of the hall. Graham then waved to Taylor and called him a “naughty boy.” One reviewer limited his rating to 4 inches wide blank space on the page.
For that program Joyce Theater, June 14-19. Paul Taylor Dance Company will revive that night’s work “Events II” with excerpts from another experimental work “Images and Reflections” made the following year. The program also includes three other early Taylor works, “Fiber” (1961), “Tracer” (1962), and “Aureol” (1962). His 1979 “profile”. Two new dances by guest choreographers.
In a recent interview, the company’s artistic director, Michael Novak, said of these works, “There’s something very raw and untouched, like the musician’s first album.” “I’m trying to create a dynamic night that keeps talking about Paul’s work.”
Taylor writes in his memoir “Private Domain” that “Seven New Dance” maps him as a choreographer and is different from his teacher Graham and his modern-day Merce Cunningham. Not only was it a bit noisy in the dance world, these youthful experiments served an artistic purpose. They provided some of the ingredients Taylor uses to build his identity as a dance maker. This was later described as “non-psychological” (Graham’s jab), meticulously constructed (Merce Cunningham’s chance technique jab), and down. Toward the Terra (ballet jab).
At that time, he worked with another young artist, Robert Rauschenberg, in the process of refining his ideas about art. “Events II,” “Images and Reflections,” and “Tracer” are all designed by Rauschenberg, and some are quirky, like the wheels of a rotating bicycle in “Tracer.” There are also pedestrians who look like simple everyday clothes for “Event II”.
In the Joyce program, these works are juxtaposed with the “Aureol” created shortly after the 1962 “Tracer”. These first works were sharp and mysterious, “Aureol” It was fluid, vast, athletic, and lyrical. It embraced physical and constructive beauty and even closely reflected it as it embodied music. It was a new beginning for Taylor and led him to lasting popularity. The success of “Aureole” allowed him to quit his job at Graham.
Those early experiments were soon forgotten. (“Event II” hasn’t happened since 1958, and “Images and Reflections” hasn’t happened since 1961.) It’s only recently that some companies have revived. The dramatic and wild “fiber” was revived in 2014. The “tracer”, which includes freeze-like poses, small jumps, and the elastic and powerful male technique that Taylor uses many times, is back in 2016.
Presenting these works together draws a line from Taylor’s first question about the dance material itself to the embrace of form and beauty represented by “Aureol”. Also, as Novak said, it’s a way to remind the public that Taylor was also a member of the avant-garde.
“I find it interesting how often Taylor isn’t mentioned because it’s related to postmodernism and the Judson Dance Theater,” said dancers and composers such as Yvonne Reiner, James Warring, and Rauschenberg. , Mentioning a group of artists, said Novak. We gathered in New York in the 1960s to rethink the basics of performance. “His name is not on that list.”
Judson artists rejected modern dance feats, stories, and dramatic self-expression. “You look at some of these works,” Novak said of Taylor’s early works. “And they were the predecessors of Judson. He was part of it.”
Due to the popularity of dances such as “Aureol”, “Brandenburg” and “Esplanade”, Taylor’s repertoire is often considered not radical as it is elegantly constructed and set to Baroque music. I have. But Taylor never really forgot the first lesson he taught himself. “Quietness, posture and gestures-these themes were present in all his dances,” Novak said.
The use of everyday movements can be traced directly back to the first program of 1957. At the rehearsal of “Event II” at the company’s studio on the Lower East Side, two women in calf-length dresses and pumps appeared in typical 50s outfits. The dress flapped in a breeze (Rauschenberg’s idea), stood, turned his head, folded his arms, crouched, walked, faced and separated.
“One of the hardest things about being a dancer is just stopping,” said Jada Pearman, who plays “Event II.” It’s hard for her not to look like a dancer. “She” she has no music to measure time, so the two — Pearman, one of the company’s latest dancers, is paired with a veteran. Elan Bugge — I had to follow the internal rhythm. Another dancer hidden in the wings helped keep the beat by hand, just like a conductor.
Despite the lack of steps and the apparent lack of drama, the duet works strangely. The dancer seems to be waiting for something, thinking and preparing to speak.
For Taylor, this pairing was a way to reveal the individuality of the dancer he used as an expression tool. “Without disguise, our individual characteristics are revealed,” he wrote in a “private domain.” “And our shape, spacing and timing are well established.”
This idea is also shown in an excerpt from the “Images and Reflections” created in 1958 (the film still has only three sections). These include two solos Taylor created for himself, where John Harnage and Devon Lewis dance.
As Harnage and Louis rehearsed these solos, we could see Taylor, a swimmer before switching to dance, exploring energy in contrast to his body range. For one, the dancer uses his arms like wings to stretch, bend, and twist his torso, revealing Taylor’s known fluid strength and flexibility. In another solo, the dancer alternates between fast, explosive movements and controlled, almost heroic passages, filling the surrounding space.
“In these works, we can see Paul’s perfect norms of movement, all of which are beginning to emerge,” said Christina Lynch Markham, dancing in “Fiber.” “The hardest thing is to do a Taylor style before it becomes a style.”
The dancers did much of the early work of reconstructing the choreography, often using blurry dark archive films and a wealth of notes written by Taylor.
These notes are a treasure trove that includes both a step-by-step explanation (“raise to the 4th position and turn your right arm down”) and a stick figure illustration. Event II has two columns, one for each dancer, showing a series of poses. The arrows indicate the direction the dancer is facing, and the numbers indicate the number of counts to hold the position. (Most of these works are not “set” to music in the traditional sense.)
But what is barely shown is the intent to support the movement. “Paul never let you enter the mystery of what the movement means,” said Lee Dufenek, who plays on “Tracer.”
The dancers include Betty De Jong, a senior rehearsal director who joined the company in 1962. Dejon, like Taylor, has no meaning, but is an inexhaustible source of information about dance.
“We get a lot of background from Betty,” said Markham. “She tells us about the dancers who appeared in these works, their personality, and how they liked to move.” De John also moves from these early works. I remember where they were reproduced in later repertoires, and how they looked and felt.
Joyce’s program reveals aspects of Taylor that many have never seen. “I intentionally programmed this way,” Novak said. “The flip that Paul made when he created’Aureol’is amplified when he sees what happened before.”