Short Changed
Esplanade is Paul Taylor at his best.
Few choreographers have had careers as long and productive as Paul Taylor. So it seemed appropriate that his opening-night program at the Annenberg included work as early as 1975 (he actually started choreographing back in the 1950s) and as recent as 2008.
Ironically, 1975's Esplanade looked fresher and more inventive than his more recent Changes. Taylor's excellent dancers literally exploded onstage, leaping, sliding, rolling and hurling themselves into each others' arms. It's been around awhile, but Esplanade is Taylor at his best.
Brand-new Changes takes cues from the Mamas and the Papas sound. Here Taylor lapses into clichés of the '60s with bell-bottom pants, tie-dye tops, joints being passed around and a general air of youthful unconcern. Some of this has charm, but most verged on sophomoric. Still, you can't totally dislike a dance that includes "I Call Your Name" and "California Dreamin.'"
Truly gorgeous was 2007's Lines of Loss, a movement poem that takes its inspiration from an elegy by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Snodgrass. Such lines as "No moon outlives its leaving night/ No sun its day ... so night by night, my life has gone" set the mood. The stage was designed with simple black lines across the backdrop. Dancers entered as black silhouettes, transformed suddenly by light into figures in white. The music was an intriguing assemblage of interesting modern composers, including Arvo Pärt, John Cage and Alfred Schnittke.
Within the structure of this dance were notions of love, trust, betrayal, old age and death. The dancers rolled out into this stage space and to this music, slipping effortlessly between serenity and violence. The piece ended mysteriously with hooded figures coming onstage and falling to the floor; when the lights came up, the figures were revealed, clad in bright red against the black-and-white background. As they stretched out on the floor like an exclamation mark, dancers quietly slid down beside them as if their sun had outlived its day.
Paul Taylor Dance Co. | June 5, Annenberg Center
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