More Paul Taylor @ City Center

Saturday February 25, 2011 evening – DUST, set to Francis Poulenc’s Concert Champetre. opened the evening at City Center as Paul Taylor Dance Company continued their exciting season there. In the collage-photo above by Tom Caravaglia, the dancers are Laura Halzack, Jeffrey Smith, Michelle Fleet and Parisa Khobdeh.

In this work, first performed in 1977, Taylor hobbles his dancers with various physical infirmities. While the movement suggests struggle and despair, the Poulenc music with its eerily tinkling harpisichord – which the great Wanda Landowska who premiered the piece in 1929 said made her feel “insouciant and gay” – sounds in direct contrast of mood to what we are watching onstage. This is one of those cases of a choreographer going against the grain of the music and making something unique out of it.

One of the most memorable sequences in the darkly unsettling DUST is a solo danced by the majestically lovely Laura Halzack where she is surrounded by blind people moving hesitently around her. There were extraordinary performances by Annamaria Mazzini and Amy Young as well, with the ensemble completed by James Samson, Robert Kleinendorst, Michelle Fleet, Jeffrey Smith, Eran Bugge and Jamie Rae Walker.

One of Paul Taylor’s newest creations, THREE DUBIOUS MEMORIES, evolves around a romantic triangle. Anyone who has ever been involved in one of these three-sided relationships knows that each party will have his or her own take on the situation: how it started, how it is kept going and how it might end. Taylor, using a multi-faceted score by Peter Elyakim Taussig (photo above) entitled Five Enigmas, sets his new work so that we see the story told from each point of view: from the woman’s and from each of the two men. Each of the men – Sean Mahoney in blue and Robert Kleinendorst in green – see the other man as the interloper while the woman – Amy Young wearing a bright red dress – seems to think the men are actually attracted to one another and she is the unwitting third party. This third vignette brings a humorous vein to a basically serious and thoughtful work.

Amy Young (above in Tom Caravaglia’s photo) gave a wonderfully expressive and beautifully danced performance as the woman while the two men duked it out in stylized fist fights. When Sean and Robert were later depicted as happy and relaxed gay lovers, Amy gave a decisive portrayal of a woman scorned. To all of this a chorus of dancers led by James Samson made visual comments on the action. The work is complex and each of the three stories is set to music with a different feeling: pulsating rhythms for the man in blue, chant-like spitituality for the man in green, and minor-key jazzy for the woman’s narrative. I’m glad that I’ll get a chance to see this new work again next week; now that I know the premise and structure I will be able to savor the details. On first viewing the last minutes of the work, after the three tales have been told, seemed a bit long but maybe that will sort out in future encounters.

I rate CLOVEN KINGDOM (created in 1976) very high among my favorite Taylor works, not least for its fusion score. So I had no problem seeing it two nights in a row (with a third viewing set for next week). This evening the four men in the cast gave a teriffic performance: Michael Trusnovec, Robert Kleinendorst, Francisco Graciano and Michael Novak. The four women in mirrored headwear were also superb: Amy Young and Laura Halzack – in an interrupted duet that picks up where it left off – along with Aileen Roehl who, in diagonals of spirted jumps, pursues the enigmatic Eran Bugge who is clad in lime green and balancing a silvery globe on her head. Annamaria Mazzini, Michelle Fleet, Parisa Khobdeh and Jamie Rae Walker weave beautifully in and out of this mysterious ballroom where things are not always as they seem.