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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for August 26, 2003

Not necessarily 9/11

August 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Even though I receive complimentary press tickets to most of the shows I want to see, I still get a huge kick out of free performances, especially when they’re outside. I love the uncomplicated carnival atmosphere, the feeling that everybody came to play. Of course it helps that in New York, you often get to see fairly famous people for free, meaning that the crowds are staggeringly large–but it’s still fun as long as the weather is nice, and sometimes even when it’s not.

I don’t know how hot it was when I went to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park a couple of days before I left for Maine (I was too scared to check), but it definitely wasn’t balmy, and I didn’t care, at least not too terribly much, since you can never see the Taylor company often enough, hot or not. I was particularly interested in their appearance at Lincoln Center Out of Doors because they were dancing Promethean Fire, a new work that had its New York premiere in March, and I was curious to see how it would hold up on a third viewing (I also saw an incomplete runthrough last year at Taylor’s downtown studio).

As soon as I got home, I looked up what I’d written about Promethean Fire in the Washington Post back in March:

Taylor must have been in one of his apocalyptic moods when he made this jolting piece, set to three of Leopold Stokowski’s orchestral transcriptions of Bach organ music. The first one, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, was used in “Fantasia,” which Taylor claims was his inspiration. Maybe, but nothing in “Fantasia” is remotely as hair-raising as the final tableau of the first section, in which the dancers pile up in the middle of the stage, looking for all the world like a heap of corpses, out of which Patrick Corbin and Lisa Viola emerge to dance a stunned pas de deux.

At the same time that Taylor claimed Fantasia was his inspiration, he specifically denied having had 9/11 in mind when making Promethean Fire, and I took him at his word. Like George Balanchine, he’s very careful about disclosing the “secret meanings” of his dances–he wants you to think about what’s happening on stage, not in your head. Nor was I inclined to suspect him of being coy.

Yet as I watched Promethean Fire under the stars at Lincoln Center, with low-flying jets gliding into LaGuardia Airport not so very far above my head, I started to have my doubts. It’s true that Taylor has always been drawn to the unspecifically apocalyptic (this, after all, is a man who once made a dance called Last Look). But as I watched the male dancers hoisting women over their heads in positions eerily evocative of flight, after which the whole ensemble crumpled into that terrifying center-stage heap, I found I couldn’t simply write off Promethean Fire as a piece of pure abstraction.

Once the applause had died down, I turned to the friend I’d brought with me.

“Paul says this isn’t about 9/11,” I told her.

“Yeah, right,” she replied.

Does it matter? Not a bit. A plotless dance is about what you think it’s about while you’re watching it. The next time, it might be about something completely different. What Paul Taylor was thinking about when he made Promethean Fire is his business, to be disclosed if and only if he chooses to spill the beans. I admire his refusal to give his viewers an easy escape path to equally easy meanings.

But…is Promethean Fire about 9/11? Your guess is–literally–as good as mine.

In the bag

August 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Time again for “In the Bag,” my personal variant of the old desert-island game, featuring a twist of the wrist. In this version, the emphasis is on immediate and arbitrary preference. You can put five works of art into your bag before departing for that good old desert island, but you have to decide right this second. No dithering–the death squad is banging on the front door. No posturing–you have to say the first five things that pop into your head, no matter how dumb they may sound. What do you stuff in the bag?

As of this moment, here are my picks. I don’t mind admitting (well, maybe a little bit) that one of them is kind of dopey. Nevertheless, I swore I’d tell the whole truth and nothing but, so here goes nothing:

BOOK: Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Sir William Walton, First Symphony

PAINTING: John Singer Sargent, A Study from Life (Egyptian Girl)

MOVIE: Michael Caton-Jones, Doc Hollywood

POP ALBUM: The Band, The Band

Your turn.

Almanac

August 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

“A certain amount of brick-throwing might even be a good thing. There comes a moment in the career of most artists, if they are any good, when attacks on their work take a form almost more acceptable than praise.”

Anthony Powell, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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