Why I Care

There are a myriad of reasons why I have a reverence towards the work of Paul Taylor and the influence that he has had on the world of modern dance.  The main reason that I am so drawn to his work is his ability to have a social commentary about his work in a powerful and moving way that strays away from politics and the often stoic nature of that aspect of our society here in America.  He is able to successfully combine dark and serious and witty and funny in a way that is always natural and inventive.  Because of his revolutionary approach to choreography and movement, he is an artist that I greatly admire and appreciate for his contribution to what dance is today.

One characteristic of Paul’s work that I find to be fascinating is his sense of humor.  It is so subtle and yet so obvious such as in the work “From Sea to Shining Sea” where he pokes fun and questions the icons found in American culture.  What makes him so unique is the fact that he doesn’t just make statements solely to say what his opinions are, but he poses questions for society to ponder on many touchy subjects that we often don’t like to talk about in society.  When I am choreographing I find myself making dances that are serious and about personal experience.  I think I can learn a lot from Paul about using my personal experiences to be inquisitive and look more at the subtleties of life.  Taylor often uses pedestrian movements to inspire his choreography like in “Esplanade.”  This was one of my favorite pieces of his with the beautiful movement quality and the structure that the 5 different sections employed. 

The public needs to take note of Paul Taylor and his contribution to dance because of the sheer scope of his work.  He is over 80 years old and has been making dances since a young age.  By seeing his dances over the years, you can see the history and events in society that were the driving force for his work.  Looking at his dances, you can see the social commentary and the emotions that were felt at the time the dance was made.  It is fascinating that his dances have such a resonance and connection with our history and our social culture because he himself has described his work as being something purely for him and not for society, yet it has so much impact for society. Today, it is easy to see the influence that Paul Taylor has had on the dance world.  He is still making dances at such an old age and doesn't intend to stop.  I admire how driven and passionate he is about making dances and know that learning more about him will forever impact me as an artist.

"Company B"

“Evokes the exuberant rhythms of the '40's as well as the grim and persistent shadow of war. But even more vividly, it honors Taylor's magnificent dancers. Some of the most glorious dancing to be seen anywhere…” – Laura Shapiro, Newsweek

Music: Songs sung by the Andrews Sisters
Costumes: Santo Loquasto
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Date First Performed: June 20, 1991

http://www.thefastertimes.com/dance/2010/07/04/a-note-on-paul-taylor%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Ccompany-b%E2%80%9D/

By Jose

Why I Care

One of the things that interests me about Paul Taylor is his ability to make work that is both funny and uplifting or dark and serious. I have just begun to realize how more comfortable I am in making work that is serious or psychological rather than light-hearted or funny. Paul Taylor though, seems to find a balance between both, and I admire that. He is able to drop subtle hints of something being "off" and then proceed with moments of humor, but always getting to the tragic humor of our faults as humans.

For instance, in "Company B", a work centered around music from the forties and the cheerfulness of wearing pastel colors dancing and celebrating being American, there is an underlying message of war and how at any moment they may be called to serve their country and die. The piece quickly introduces this parallel idea of joy and darkness by having people fall and "die" and then getting up again like nothing happen. Paul drops these subtle ideas that begin to compile and make sense, and the tragedy is that we forget about these psychological ideas of mourning, depression, and fear until we make the connections. Paul's ability to layer his work through costumes, music, dancing, and ideas is something that I appreciate.

Generally the public should note his work and follow his legacy as I would describe him, a virtuosic choreographer. He has created work about war, incest, homosexuality, and religion among other polar ideas. Paul has also been able to juxtapose and layer his works through concepts and music and even created work based on daily observation of people such as a woman trying to catch a bus ("Esplanade").  Even more interesting is that he does all of these works because it interests him, rather than making work that is solely about war or innocence.

Paul Taylor is just as in the "scene" as any other younger choreographers (in comparison to his age of 81 years old). He is still making work, two of his most recent within the last year are "House of Joy" and "Gossamer Gallants". His works still explore varying subjects like prostitution, insects, memory, an artists' experiences among others. Though some of our current choreographers explore site specific, improvisation, and/or technology, Paul is still holding strong with what he does, and from what I learn of him is that he would not have it any other way. He would not be jealous or envious, he would simply keep working until some new idea comes to him, not necessarily trying to compete with the more current dance scene, but perhaps leaving room to create work on the present day advances and probably poke fun of in some way.

by Jose

"From Sea to Shining Sea"

“If the United States had a proper arts policy, Paul Taylor would be declared a national treasure…Sea [has a] naughtily satiric view of Lady Liberty and the other symbols of America ranging from Superman to the KKK… Darkly funny.” – Christine Temin, Boston Globe


-AR

Blog Post 3: The Bigger Picture

Paul Taylor's choreographic works are known to be a depiction of complex societal issues and observations of life and its many trials and tribulations.  The reason that his work reflects and comments on issues that were relevant to a certain time period in which the work was made.  In saying this, we will discuss the historical situations, politics, industry, technological, and social events that informed what is considered as "Paul Taylor dance."

Taylor's first work her ever created was called 3 Epitaphs (1954), a symbolic expression of both the drudgery of life (plodding to the sounds of the mournful music of New Orleans jazz,)  and the joys that can be found in life seen through the humorous swinging movements. The 1950's in America were full of hopeful attitudes and prosperity.  In this piece, Paul was making a comment that although there was a brighter side to everyday life, another darker side still exists.  Although this piece is often looked upon as being humorous, it can also be seen as contrasting between two different views of outlooks in the 1950s.  

Another famous work by Paul Taylor is a collection of works entitles "Seven  New Dances" performed in October 1957.  All sections of the piece were inspired by pedestrian movement.  The scores to the sections were ordinary sounds such as rain, wind, heartbeats, telephone sounds, and avante-garde composer John Cage.  In this time period, this piece was extremely daring and unlike any previous work done by other choreographers.  His work was influenced by people in everyday life walk through the world and how they see themselves fitting into society.  This collaboration with John Cage was very influential during this time and opened the door for more pedestrian movement and a new way to look at music.  

Scudorama (1963) was greatly influenced by the political and social unrest that was going on in the United States.  In this time period, John F Kennedy was the president.  Americans were at the brink of having a nuclear war erupt after the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Taylor depicts the fears and anxieties of this generation through the unsettling aura illuminated in this piece.  

In 1965 taylor choreographed From Sea to Shining Sea, a piece with a dark humor towards the American ideals and icons during this time period.  The piece takes a stance regarding social attitudes towards Lady Liberty, Superman, and the KKK to deliver a satirical view of society in the 1960s. 

In the '70s Taylor put rape and incest into view in his work entitels Big Bertha.  He was attempting to reveal the inner beast found beneath the surface of what is seen to the outside eye.  In the '80s Taylor continued to continue to explore issues that were never talked about by the public.  He explored marital rape and the intimacy between men at war during the Vietnam era.  In Byzantium Taylor looks at religion and the rule of a "superpower" society that starts with a religious ceremony and ends in the disintegration of the society.  

In Company B (1991)  Taylor depicts the 1940s and the despair and turbulence in an era where many Americans went off to WWII and many to never return again.  The piece is set to rather uplifting Andrews Sisters music to depict the falsely held belief by the American people that there was hope because of the newfound escape from the Great Depression.  This piece includes death and distress among the American people and is truly a depiction of the changes seen in America during that time period.  He is seen as one of the greatest war poets.  

In the '90s he choreographed A Field of Grass (1993) that is a relfection of the 1960s and the decade's value for love, drugs, and death.  He explores the idea of conformity and religious following seen in the '90s in The Word (1998) In the 2000's he has made worked such as Fiends Angelical (2000,) Antique Valentine (2001,) In the Beginning (2003,)  that touches on feminism, American imperialism, good and evil, death, and religion.  

-AR & JL

Paul Taylor "Esplanade"

 

Music: 

 Johann Sebastian Bach

Costumes: 

 John Rawlings

Lighting: 

 Jennifer Tipton

Date First Performed: 

 March 1, 1975

Notes: An esplanade is an outdoor place to walk; in 1975 Paul Taylor, inspired by the sight of a girl running to catch a bus, created a masterwork based on pedestrian movement. If contemporaries Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg could use ordinary “found objects” like Coke bottles and American flags in their art, Taylor would use such “found movements” as standing, walking, running, sliding and falling. The first of five sections that are set to two Bach violin concertos introduces a team of eight dancers brimming with Taylor’s signature youthful exuberance. An adagio for a family whose members never touch reflects life’s somber side. When three couples engage in romantic interplay, a woman standing tenderly atop her lover’s prone body suggests that love can hurt as well as soothe. The final section has dancers careening fearlessly across the stage like Kamikazes. The littlest of them – the daughter who had not been acknowledged by her family – is left alone on stage, triumphant: the meek inheriting the earth.

Source: http://www.ptdc.org/repertoire/esplanade

Paul Taylor "Scudorama"

Music: 

 Clarence Jackson

Set and Costumes: 

 Alex Katz

Lighting: 

 Thomas Skelton

Date First Performed: 

 August 10, 1963

 The dance dates from 1963, when Americans were still in the grip of nuclear fear following the Cuban missile crisis.  Taylor was keenly attuned to the anxiety of the era and expressed these unresolved tensions in the dance, which carries a program note quoting Dante: “What souls are these who run through this Black haze… These are the nearly soulless whose lives concluded neither blame nor praise.”    The title combined the type of clouds that race across the sky before a storm with a 1960s term for “bigger and better” that to Taylor connoted “tacky.”

-AR

Paul Taylor "Promethean Fire"

Music:  J.S. Bach, transcribed by Leopold Stokowski

Set and Costumes: 

 Santo Loquasto

Lighting: 

 Jennifer Tipton

Date First Performed: 

 June 6, 2002

Notes: Renewal of spirit is the re-occuring theme.

“It has grandeur, majesty and a spiritual dimension.  It is also quite simply one of the best dance works choreographed by Paul Taylor. …[The dancers] are building blocks in the human cathedral that Mr. Taylor constructs uncannily and perfectly with such powerful emotional resonance.” – Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times

-AR

Professional Lineage

Paul Taylor began training in dance at age 21.  Two years later, in 1953, he began dancing with Martha Graham's company.  While being in the company he performed important roles like Aegisthus in Clytemnestra (1958)  Hercules in Alcestis (1960), and Theseus in Phaedra (1962). He also trained in modern dance under Jose Limon and Doris Humphrey and ballet under Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske. He performed works by other modern choreographers including Charles Weidman and Merce Cunninghamg. George Balanchine create a solo for him in Episodes (1959) music by Anton Webern. It was in his work, "3 Epitaphs" that he recalls stepping away from Martha's influence and creating his own identity, he states: "Well, of course, I wanted to do everything in my work to get away from her work. I did not want to be another little Martha Graham, as much as I admired her...So I was always trying to find ways, frankly, to annoy her." Most of the stylistic choices that Taylor made in his work depicted his desire to escape from his Martha roots.  For example he described his movement style as sometimes "flat" (2-dimensionality), "dance scribbling" (emphasis on action rather than shape or line), and "lyric" (long arms.) Most of his collaborations were with musicians, most notably including John Cage and Claude Debussy. He also collaborated with his conductor Donald York, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, and set designer Alex Katz while he owned his company Paul Taylor Dance Company. Katz sums up his experience with Taylor,  “I learned a lot doing sets and costumes in terms of scale. I learned a lot from Paul in terms of gestures and relationships between people. I learned from Paul that all your pieces don’t have to be the same. I learned from Paul never to be complacent towards the public. I learned a lot from Paul in terms of styling ideas. I learned a lot from Paul that the one person you don’t want to bore is yourself.”

-AR&JL

Paul Taylor Biography

SMALL BIOGRAPHY
 Paul Taylor was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up around the area of Washington D.C. until he moved to New York to attend Syracuse University studying painting and participating in swimming. It was up until his senior year in college that he decided to transfer to Julliard to become a dance major; auditioning in socks because he couldn't decided to be a modern or ballet dancer.His career has included in creating a company in 1954 and dancing until 1974, having created over 134 works.

One of the core contributions of Paul Taylor was his use of music in juxtaposition against the movement. He would use Ragtime, Rock, Tango, classical symphonies, and scores by Debussy and Cage among others. Paul would even use noise of telephone and sound of human laughter to accompany his dances. Among the different types of music he would pursue normal-day gestures to create his movement as well as explore how man fits into nature. He would then touch on heavier topics such: sexuality, rape, incest, religion, war, spirituality, morality, and mortality. This particular range of topics is what distinguished him from his time and modern dance predecessors.

AR & JL

Allie's History

I am Allie Rick and I am currently studying dance at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. My passion for dance began at the ripe age of three when I began taking dance classes at a local dance studio. Throughout elementary school, my studies intensified and I began to learn the basics of dance styles such as ballet, modern, jazz, tap, and hip hop. When I was about 7 I decided that along with training at the studio, I wanted to join the competitive group in the studio that travelled to different dance competitions around the country. I remember my mindset at that young age being that I wanted to learn as much about the basic technique of as many styles as possible. I am so thankful that I got to train starting at such a young age, but due to financial issues, I had to leave the studio and taking dance classes after 8^th grade. I continued to dance through high school by taking part in the high school pom pon team and performing at my high school. Although it did not consist of training in technique as intensely as I had in the past, it kept me in shape and flexible. The choice to stop training in dance in high school was one of the toughest decisions I had to make, but due to the circumstances, I had to do it for the sake of my family.

After I graduated high school I decided to attend the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee with the intention of majoring in Communication. I have always had a passion for talking and communicating with others and thought that studying communication would make me happy. It didn’t; something was missing. Dance. I decided to audition for the dance department my second semester at school, and it was definitely the right choice in hindsight. I am finally doing what I love again and learning more and more about what dance means to me. From an excerpt of a paper I recently wrote about what dance means:

“To me, dance isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am. Dance isn’t solely an art form; but a lifestyle, a best friend, a mentor, and a continuous journey that allows me to grow and create the person that I am today and who I will be in the future. Unlike many things in life, dance is non-perishable and produces feelings and emotions that no one could ever take away from me. It is always there to lift me up on a bad day, listen to my story, and share it with an audience without any words. Dance is my notebook where I record my life; my laboratory where I discover my inner-self; and my home where I am happy and at peace. Dance is a thrill and an excitement that never gets old, boring, or tired; there is always a new goal to obtain. Dance is my language that allows me to communicate with the world and opens the door to many experiences and opportunities.”

I want to further develop technique and an understanding of dance in the next year that I am hear and carry that out into my career after UW-Milwaukee. Dealing with the obstacles and the triumphs life throws at you really inspires me in my movement, and I plan to make a piece that describes that feeling and connection for my senior project. I am ready to soak in as much as I can to be the best dancer I can be.

Jose's History

I am Jose Angel Luis. I was born in Veracruz, Mexico in 1990 and four years later I moved to Racine, Wisconsin. When I was five years old I went back to Mexico for an extended period of time and as a result did not finish kindergarten. Then I came back entering first grade and taking bilingual classes all five years and ESL until third grade. In my elementary years I was put in small dance performances, one of which I remember being a flower. I can’t say much else of it, except I was a yellow flower. Throughout the end of my elementary years I would devotedly watch S Club 7, a British pop group that had their own television series. Not only did it help me learn English quicker, but that is when I started to learn choreography and create my own when they didn’t have a dance for a song I liked. Ironically, I would hate performing anything live.

In middle school I refused to go to school dances, and refused to go on stage in my drama class. Middle school was a huge transitional moment for me, because although some of my bilingual classmates from elementary school still stayed in those classes until late middle school, I was able to progress into regular classes; as a result, losing part of the group of people I came from. High school then came, and it wasn’t until my sophomore year that I decided I wanted to pursue dance.

It was through my involvement in theater that I was introduced to improv. My teacher, Nancy Gibson was in contact with Josie Henningfield and Sofi Askenazi and brought them to do small dance workshops with us. Although that sparked my interest in movement, it wasn’t until witnessing Alvin Ailey’s “Revelation” in Chicago that I knew I wanted to be a dancer. It is least to say that improv and contact improv highly influence who I am as a mover, with of course, some theatrical influences. As I finished high school and remained in the theater program, I got more involved in choreography and eventually ended choreographing a self-written musical my senior year.

I set high goals for myself, but really I just look at these goals as daily responsibilities. I have to do the work to get something out of it, and if it is something I am really curious about I devote myself completely. If there is one trait that I would admire and hate about me is that I am a pusher, meaning that I keep going until I burn out. It pays off, but it is quite evident among my peers and mentors. Yet, this is something that I value about dancers; we are always working and learning more about our craft.