“Dance like there’s no tomorrow” appears to be the motto of the 19-strong Paul Taylor Dance Company, a legacy from the years when the hard-driving choreographer was alive. They did just that on Saturday night, barely a week into their ambitious three-week season at the Koch, firing on all cylinders in the two big ensemble pieces, Taylor's Company B and Esplanade, arguably the two most beloved works in their repertoire.
Between the frenzied jitterbugging in the former and the deliberate crash-landings in the latter, the energy expenditure in just one evening was off the charts. I caught myself wondering whether they had enough understudies, just in case.
They’re a young company these days – eleven of them joined in or after the pandemic (sadly, a common way to reference time these days). It’s not as if they all have the muscle memory to help them get through a part if thrown in at the 11th hour. But this is a company that seems to live on the edge.
“Carefree… happy as can be”: the Andrews Sisters gave the ‘Pennsylvania Polka’ a shot of big-band adrenaline in 1942. At the time, Axis powers had reached the peak of their expansion, deep into the Soviet Union and North Africa. Onstage, Lisa Borres Casey’s skirt went flying as Austin Kelly tossed her into the air; they went for broke while behind them in silhouette, men in khakis stalked an unseen enemy and fell over in slow-mo. Through the stretch of wartime songs turned into radio gold, we got glimpses of despair amid endless Lindy Hop and Hollywood samba sequences. As dark as some of his work could get, Company B traffics heavily in cliché and skates over the ickier material in songs like ‘Rum and Coca Cola’. Not even the sassiness of Madelyn Ho could transcend lyrics that referred blithely to the American GI exploitation of Trinidadian women “working for the Yankee dollar”.
Standouts in this period piece were a very fine twitchy and virtuosic Alex Clayton in ‘Tico-Tico’. John Harnage’s irrepressible ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)’ – crisp, buoyant and light. Until he too was gunned down. Elizabeth Chapa was haunted by loss in ‘There Will Never Be Another You’ while Devon Louis’ splendidly ethereal presence marked him as the ghost of her dead lover.
Esplanade offered the serotonin boost we all need in these times. Even the second movement’s somber depiction of family alienation triggers catharsis. On Saturday night, Chapa stirringly embodied a tragic mother figure while Jessica Ferretti dashed around her like a guardian angel, falling backward in a kind of swirling benediction. Jada Pearman was the vibrant, free-spirited daughter who sought reconciliation but was repeatedly denied; yet as Bach’s glorious Double Violin Concerto wound to a close, when the two solo violins made peace with the orchestra, she reveled in being the odd man out.
Emmy Wildermuth slayed the final movement’s careening solo. And beyond the madcap spiraling and unspiraling sequences, the hurtling through the air into a partner’s arms, and the daredevil jumps into a baseball slide, rose an even more glorious force – a tornado of feeling that seized Kristin Draucker, who buried her face in Lee Duveneck’s shoulder as he spun her around wildly.
Supremely touching, too, were the tender rocking and cradling lifts, the devotion in the dancers’ eyes as they signalled: give me a knee to perch on, a steadying hand as I rise from a fall, a hammock to nap in, someone to watch over me while I sleep.
The only subdued note came from the orchestra, for it sounded like conductor David LaMarche was commanding a depleted army of strings on Saturday night. The solo violins chased each other with a notable lack of verve.
Music and dance fused brilliantly in Takademe, a cyclone of a solo created by Robert Battle in 1999. Rapid-fire Carnatic vocal percussion by Sheila Chandra, from her album ‘Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices’, triggered an avalanche of slinky and spiky movement that coursed through the sculpted physique of dancer Devon Louis.
The mixed bill was rounded off by Troilus and Cressida (reduced), one of Taylor’s fluffier creations. Alex Clayton and Madelyn Ho made the most of its zany charms, abetted by Santo Loquasto’s bijou set and goofy costumes, including a pair of velvet trousers that insisted on pooling around Clayton’s knees. Shakespeare’s play illuminated the futility and insanity of war. Taylor gave us a metaphor of inept dancers standing in for inept warriors, to Ponchielli’s merry ‘Dance of the Hours’. Under the present circumstances of American kakistocracy, the focus on ineptitude seemed perfectly apt for our time.
