Paul Taylor (choreographer)

Paul Belville Taylor Jr. (July 29, 1930 – August 29, 2018) was an American dancer and choreographer. He was one of the last living members of the third generation of America's modern dance artists.The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed

Retrieved 28 February 2016. He founded the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1954 in New York City.

Early life and education

Taylor was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to Paul Belville Taylor Sr., a physicist, and to the former Elizabeth Rust Pendleton. He grew up in and around Washington, DC. By his teens, he had grown to more than six feet in height. Taylor attended Virginia Episcopal School. He was a student of painting and swam and competed on the swim team, for which he was the recipient of a swimming scholarship, at Syracuse University in the late 1940s. Upon discovering dance through books at the school library, Taylor created his first piece of choreography on Syracuse University Dance department students, which was entitled ''Hobo Ballet''. Taylor then transferred to Juilliard, where he earned a B.S. degree in dance in 1953 under director Martha Hill. It is Taylor's dedication to swimming and other widely varied experiences that has been said to have taught him the commitment imperative to a successful dance career and allowed him to develop his unique and diverse dance aesthetic.

Career

In 1954 Taylor assembled a small company of dancers and began making his own works. A commanding performer despite his late start, he joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1955 for the first of seven seasons as soloist where he created the role of the evil Aegisthus in Graham's ''Clytemnestra,'' as well as other roles including in ''Acrobats of God and Alcestis, Visionary Recital, One More Gaudy Night,'' and ''Phaedra''. All the while he was continuing to choreograph on his own small troupe. He also worked with the choreographers Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, José Limón and Jerome Robbins. In 1959 he was invited by George Balanchine to be a guest artist with New York City Ballet, performing his ''Episodes''.

Taylor's early choreographic projects have been noted as distinctly different from the modern, physical works he would come to be known for later, and have even invited comparison to the conceptual performances of the Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s. Taylor worked closely with painter Robert Rauschenberg who is said to have created the paintings that inspired Taylor's choreography for several pieces including ''Three Epitaphs'' and ''Seven New Dances''. Specifically, Rauschenberg's series of “white” paintings resulted in John Cage’s composition, '' 4’33”'', for which Taylor’s piece ''Duet'' (1957), was inspired. ''Duet'' was part of Taylor’s ''Seven New Dances'' concert which became Taylor’s first claim to fame due to this piece that was deemed controversial. During ''Duet'', Taylor and dancer Toby Glanternik remained completely motionless as the pianist played Cage's "non score". On the same program was a work called ''Epic'', in which Taylor moved slowly across the stage in a business suit while a recorded time announcement played in the background. The ''Dance Observer'' critic Louis Horst published a blank column that stated only the location and date of Taylor’s performance as a review in November 1957 as a response to ''Duet'', after which Martha Graham called him a "naughty boy."

After the debut of Taylor’s ''Seven New Dances'', Taylor continued choreographing new works which led to the completion of two European tours and ten new dances, all while still dancing with the Graham company. The turning point in Taylor’s choreographic career came with the premier of his plotless work ''Aureole'' (1962), at the 1962 American Dance Festival, the success of which convinced him to finally leave the Graham company to pursue choreographic work with his group of dancers full time. With ''Aureole'', he departed from such an avant-garde aesthetic. The performance was still intended to provoke dance critics, as he cheekily set his modern movements not to contemporary music but to a baroque score. A choreographer as concerned with subject matter as he was with form, many of Taylor's pieces and movements are pointedly ''about'' something. Some movements relate to his fascination with insects and the way they move. Other movements are influenced by his love of swimming. While he may propel his dancers through space for the sheer beauty of it, he has frequently used them to illuminate such profound issues as war, piety, spirituality, sexuality, morality and mortality. He is perhaps best known for his 1975 dance, ''Esplanade.'' In ''Esplanade'' Taylor was fascinated with the everyday movement that people enacted on a daily basis—from running to sliding, to walking, jumping and falling. The five-section work is set to movements from two of J.S. Bach's violin Concertos. Taylor’s fascination with pedestrian movement continued through and beyond ''Esplanade'' as he was obsessed with the differences in different dancers’ bodies, or how a simple change in timing, position, or facing, can transform the gesture of everyday movement into dance. For example, Taylor highlighted the nuances in performances of different dancers in his piece ''Polaris'' (1976), where the dance featured two sections with identical choreography but two completely different casts.

Another well-known work of his is ''Private Domain'' (1969). Taylor was intrigued by the idea of perspective and the relationship of reality and appearance. In ''Private Domain'', Taylor commissioned a set by renowned visual artist Alex Katz, whose rectangular panels obstructed the audience from seeing a portion of the stage depending on their vantage points. The seen and unseen relationship that the audience experienced was well received. In another work, ''Lost, Found, and Lost'' (1982) Taylor again showed his interest in pedestrian movement. In one section, dancers move one by one into the wing as they are waiting on a slow-moving line.

Taylor choreographed his own version of ''The Rite of Spring'' in 1980 that he named ''Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal).'' Accompanied by a two-piano version of the original Stravinsky score, ''The Rehearsal'' is a detective story complete with gangsters and kidnappings, but Taylor balanced his version with an ode to the original. In one scene a grieving mother echoes the Chosen Maiden from Nijinsky's version. This balance of old and new was widely praised, in addition to the challenging technical demands of the movement.

Other well-known and highly regarded or controversial Taylor works include ''Big Bertha'' (1970), ''Airs'' (1978), ''Arden Court'' (1981), ''Sunset'' (1983), ''Last Look'' (1985), ''Speaking in Tongues'' (1988), ''Brandenburgs'' (1988), ''Company B'' (1991), ''Piazzolla Caldera'' (1997), ''Black Tuesday'' (2001), ''Promethean Fire'' (2002), and ''Beloved Renegade'' (2008). Some of these dances, performed by the Paul Taylor Dance Company, are also licensed by such companies as the Royal Danish Ballet, Miami City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Many scholars and dance critics have established a categorization of Taylor's works and identified patterns surrounding his choreographic development. Following Taylor's first major success ''Aureole'' (1962), Taylor's next commission for the American Dance Festival was ''Scudorama'' (1963), which provided a stark contrast to Taylor's previous work. This prompted scholars to identify a light/dark pattern in Taylor's choreography due to ''Scudorama''’s apparent representation of evil in comparison to ''Aureole''’s lyrical, sunny nature. This categorization that arose due to the uncommon versatility of Taylor’s choreography continued with critics placing Taylor works ''Airs'' (1978), ''Esplanade'' (1975), ''Arden Court'' (1981), and ''Mercuric Tidings'' (1982) in the “light” category, and ''Big Bertha'' (1970), ''Last Look'' (1985), and ''Speaking in Tongues'' (1988) in the “dark” category. Some scholars have argued that Taylor's works cannot be confined to two distinct categories though as he has also created humorous and witty, romantic, and movement centered works with the pieces ''Piece Period'' (1962), ''Roses'' (1985), and ''Images'' (1977) respectively, while also in some cases diverging from his typical plotlessness and creating story centric pieces such as ''Snow White'' (1983).

Taylor collaborated with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Alex Katz, Tharon Musser

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