Paul Taylor Turns `Loss' to Vivid Scenes of Grief

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on March 5, 2007.

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Intense and wiry, Paul Taylor's senior dancer, Lisa Viola, emerges from a circling ensemble dressed in white Sunday-best practice clothes for a solo of strange stymied gestures. She flings herself into backbends as if turning herself inside out, staggers forward on her knees in a stuttering rhythm, clasps her hands in prayer and wrings them like a person deranged by grief.

Taylor, whose company is performing at the New York's City Center, typically creates two new works a year, one gloomy and one upbeat. ``Lines of Loss,'' combines the dark with another of the choreographer's perennial fixations -- the grotesque.

The dance is constructed as a suite, its nine episodes set to plaintive music by a half-dozen composers whose careers span seven centuries. The 14th-century's Guillaume de Machaut is the earliest among them; the modernists are represented by John Cage, Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Part. Astonishingly, the common tone of the pieces makes them cohere. They form an almost seamless whole.

The choreography describes twin afflictions of profound physical incapacity and psychological devastation over the loss of one's beloved, the death of friendship, alienation from others, alienation from oneself. Several of the portraits are searing.

In one, Michael Trusnovec stands alone on stage as if he were the last person alive in a geography devoid of landmarks. He makes disconnected moves -- scratching at his body, lying down and bicycling his legs, waving his hand before his eyes, as if to confirm the terrible fact that he can't see or that the only thing to be seen is emptiness.

Pretzeled Twins

The central duet, for Viola and Trusnovec, has them dancing with their arms intertwined, like pretzeled, conjoined twins. Even when they separate briefly, as if for a breath of air, they seem doomed to an unspecified hell on earth.

Choreographically, the passage is a tour de force, at once horrible and beautiful. Finally they get some space between them, only to look more lost than ever. They walk off in opposite directions and, startlingly, turn to blow each other a kiss.

The piece begins and ends with a procession. Its eleven dancers enter single-file in silhouette against a backdrop of rough, thin black lines streaked horizontally over a white ground. In the final passage, ten of the dancers reappear in brilliant red cloaks and lie down in a snaking line that looks like a river of blood. The handsome designs are by Santo Loquasto; the evocative lighting, by the incomparable Jennifer Tipton.

Cop Out

That ending is a cop-out, though. The choreography, so ingeniously observed in places, quits before it has made a definitive point. Viola alone escapes the fate of the red- shrouded figures and walks quietly away. For some time, she's been one of Taylor's most favored dancers. Has he now cast her as angel, exempt from life's toll?

Tomorrow the company will give New York its first look at Taylor's new ``Troilus and Cressida (reduced),'' unveiled last April under the auspices of his alma mater Syracuse University. Reports from its touring venues suggest that the piece is one of the low-down comic works with which Taylor has continually peppered his repertoire. Here, tricked out in outlandish costumes, the dancers apply their athletic deftness and grace to the art of blundering in the fields of love and war.

The plot, such as it is, can be traced backward from Taylor through Shakespeare and Chaucer to Homer's ``Iliad.'' The idea of clowning around to Ponchielli's ``Dance of the Hours,'' of course, takes its cue from Walt Disney.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company is at City Center, W. 55th St. between Sixth and Seventh avenues, through March 18. Information: +1-212-581-1212; http://www.nycitycenter.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.