State of Change

Encore Magazine
http://www.encoremag.com
New work from the prolific Paul Taylor Dance Co. at City Center
by Mary Staub

Since his company’s inception more than five decades ago, Paul Taylor has choreographed two new dance works almost every year—and 2008 was no exception. Starting February 25th, during a three-week City Center season, the Paul Taylor Dance Company will perform the New York premieres of Mr. Taylor’s two newest works, Changes and Beloved Renegade, both created in 2008. The works are Mr. Taylor’s 128th and 129th, respectively.

That’s a lot of dances.

The number of cities the company has appeared in is equally impressive: more than 520. The number of countries, too: 62. Paul Taylor has been honored as a leader of modern dance with awards including a MacArthur “Genius” Award and a National Medal of the Arts. Almost everything about this modern dance company hints at greatness, and one might assume that its course for continued creativity has been perfectly paved.

But in the world of modern dance obstacles always occur and force detours. Global success, artistically, doesn’t necessarily translate into success financially; especially when measured in terms of Manhattan money.

Because of rising rents in SoHo, the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation—comprised of the Taylor Company, Taylor 2, and Taylor School—is moving to new quarters on the Lower East Side this year after making the second floor of a SoHo building its home for more than two decades. The new 20-year lease will take effect on March 1st, during the company’s City Center season.
Despite this rerouting, though, Mr. Taylor has stuck to his long-standing schedule of creating two new dances per year.

For his latest works, Mr. Taylor has again collaborated with Jennifer Tipton for lighting (more than eighty collaborations to date) and Santo Loquasto for costumes (more than 35). In the first, Changes, Mr. Taylor revisits the 1960s and youth’s yearning. The second, Beloved Renegade, is inspired by the life and work of Walt Whitman and is set to Francis Poulenc’s Gloria.

The season’s repertoire includes Scudorama, which hasn’t come to City Center in forty years, De Sueños, De Sueños que se Repiten (both 2007), Promethean Fire (2002), Esplanade (1975), and many more.

Mr. Taylor has pointedly noted (in the words of French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr), “The more things change the more they stay the same.”