In 2014 the singular American choreographer Paul Taylor announced an ambitious blueprint for moving his company into the future. The future is here – and, after Taylor’s death in 2018 and the turmoil of pandemic, a mostly new generation of dancers gamely tangles with diverse new rep alongside the heroic demands of Taylor’s choreography. Among the premieres this season at Lincoln Center is Larry Keigwin’s Drum Circle, which received a standing ovation on its opening night.
Whatever the crowd had been smoking escaped me. They might’ve been responding to the exhilarating, propulsive score by musician-composer William Catanzaro, who reigned over the proceedings alongside two co-conspirators atop a steel platform, surrounded by an arsenal of percussion. The haunting rumble of a didgeridoo summoned the dancers who jogged onstage in tight-fitting basketball jerseys and matching short shorts. A panoply of drums, cymbals and other smashing apparatus discharged a hailstorm of magnificent effects, which Keigwin’s choreographic invention simply could not match.
Circling the musicians, the dancers went through some sort of cheerleading routine, punctuated by shadow-boxing, voguing, jazzercise, sharp elbow jabs and flat-footed running and marching. Against the intriguing, multi-layered complexity of the score in which plaintive pre-recorded keyboard parts wove in and around the live instruments, the choreographic framework displayed all the complexity of a Zumba class. Hopes for a sardonic commentary on American sports-mad culture – maybe a contemporary tip of the hat to Syzygy, Taylor’s zany 80’s disco-calisthenic romp that hinted at planetary extinction and rebirth – were soon dashed. Here and there the briefest of solo turns: Jada Pearman responding eloquently to the didgeridoo; Devon Louis twisting and leaping explosively then sliding coolly into a split; Lisa Borres rockin’ out. These proved diverting, but the movement ideas never led anywhere. When Jake Vincent turned to the drummers and tried to conduct them, they ignored him, and that was as witty as the piece got. At one point, two same-sex couples made out then feverishly partner-danced; somehow, this still looked like a Zumba class. Toward the end, things got mellower, and somewhat darker; the dance got more swirly, less jumpy, and fleeting encounters contained an intriguing whiff of mystery. But it was way too late for Keigwin to show up with his ‘A’ game.
Two of Taylor’s immortal hits, Mercuric Tidings from 1982 and Esplanade from 1975, had the company firing on all cylinders. Taylor audiences do not take live music for granted so it was an uncommon pleasure to have Schubert and Bach delivered live by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Both works sandwich profoundly beautiful and enigmatic adagio movements between spirited outbursts of some of the fastest, biggest, breeziest allegro work in the business. The cloudless Mercuric Tidings is a perfect showcase for Taylor’s gloriously grounded yet steadfastly optimistic carriage of the body – an expansive, serene upper body atop extremely busy feet. The dancers zipped around, skillfully avoiding collisions, the men’s taut, rippling physiques encased in bright raspberry tights, the women’s in raspberry leotards. Speedy ground-skimming jumps with feet sharply pulled up, shot-out-of-a-cannon leaps, turning jumps with torsos crunched, slow-mo stag leaps and somersaults, enormous spiralling lifts – all fiendish challenges demolished by this crew. Madelyn Ho and John Harnage made a superb lead pair in the adagio, cool yet fiercely concentrated. Their pliant torsos wilted and unwilted; rather than making love, these two were making gorgeous shapes. They showed up with confidants who sank to one knee, as if bowing to the couple, but who were soon foregrounded, making their own intricate shapes in the air. It’s a notably democratic piece.
As is Esplanade – in which a sunny, athletic community enjoys nothing better than to chase and tease each other, taking flying leaps into each other’s arms, whirling and falling dramatically to the ground. Taylor did so much with so little: he made walking backward look momentous. Not all is cheery, though. An inscrutable domestic scene is interrupted by a woman with a mysterious tummy ache – or a great sorrow that causes her to double over in pain. That sorrow will afflict the community. But they miraculously recover and celebrate with a series of spectacular baseball slides – this cast in particular made a point of hurtling up into the air before crashing down into the slides, none with greater conviction than Christina Lynch Markham, who was on a magnificent tear throughout the piece.
At a time of great troubles in the world, the images that linger from Esplanade are not just those of bravura but of trust and caring: the cradling lifts, the steadying hands, a dancer watching over a sleeping partner. And above all, Jada Pearman gently stepping onto Devon Louis’ prone figure, then balancing on his abs as if on a surfboard, the undulations of their arms conjuring a sea anemone.
