Dance designer wrote his own rules
Before there was Mark Morris, before there was Twyla Tharp, there was Paul Taylor.
Taylor had written his own choreographic rules since the mid-1950s, giving equal weight to musicality and mirth, whimsy and warfare, sensuality and the human spirit. Taylor died at age 88 on Wednesday, Aug. 29, but his legacy will carry on in an oeuvre of 147 works, and in the countless artists he influenced around the world.
“Paul was part of this incredible lineage of American choreographers,” said Melanie Smith, president of San Francisco Performances, by phone from a conference in Las Vegas. San Francisco Performances founder Ruth Felt first brought the Paul Taylor Dance Company to the city in 1990, and the relationship carried on in biannual residencies. “It was a real honor to serve as his Bay Area home for so many years,” Smith said.
One of the last of a defining generation of midcentury modernists — a class that includes Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins and Jose Limón — he claimed the right to decide for himself what subjects were worthy of dance. Seeing his 1978 “Airs” for the first time, I felt as though I could see Handel’s music in physical form. I marveled at the craft that I knew was there only because it was invisible be-
One of the last of a generation of midcentury modernists, he claimed the right to decide what subjects were worthy of dance.
hind the lyricism of the movement. It’s the same magic you experience watching Morris works like “L’Allegro, il Penseros ed il Moderato” or, more recently, “Acis and Galatea.”
Born in 1930, Taylor learned his craft at Juilliard and danced for Graham’s company during his early years as a dance maker. Like all great originators, he had a clear point of view, and for better or worse, you can tell a Taylor work from a mile away: that jaunty bounce, those swinging arms and a firmly held carriage that can melt at the touch of a partner. His movement could look cavalier, but it was mastered by few — including Tharp, who danced with Taylor’s company in the early 1960s.
Equally monumental was his vibrant creativity, which brooked no limits. The mating habits of insects inspired “Gossamer Gallants” in 2011, with winged and antennaed dancers pitching and wooing to the Harry Nilsson songbook. He drew from the jitterbug and the jive for “Company B,” which at first glance is an Andrews Sisters frolic but has a lot to say, subtly, about American exceptionalism. A sultry Buenos Aires club comes to life in 1997’s “Piazzolla Caldera,” set to Astor Piazzolla’s tango music.
Whatever the conceit of a given Taylor work, its foundation is his marvelous musicality, perhaps best exemplified in “Esplanade.” Taylor parsed the rhythms and themes of Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major and sections of his Violin Concerto in D Minor to create his 1975 masterwork. His structure references the courtly formality of Baroque dance while cracking it open. Characters emerge and form intrigues, hop over one another, and rise and fall on and off the canons. Bach’s music may be as ubiquitous as a commercial jingle, but Taylor’s choreographic surprises reveal what familiarity has blurred.
Over and over, Taylor sought and found the perfect musical match for the wit, wonder and social commentary he expressed through dance.
“What I personally loved about his works were the many layers,” said San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson by email. He commissioned two works from Taylor, “Spring Rounds” and “Changes” (with songs by the Mamas and the Papas). “The movement itself was expansive and joyful, but there was always something deeper, evoking a certain feeling or sentiment.”
Mindful of the future, in 2014, Taylor established Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, which will present his work alongside modern classics and new commissions. And this year, he anointed company dancer Michael Novak as his successor.
San Francisco Performances plans to bring the company back in the 2019-20 season. “We are very saddened to lose Paul,” Smith said. “I’m thrilled that the company is moving forward in a spirit of reverence and respect, but also looking to the future.”