CriticalDance Forum

The Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to DANCE IN AMERICA with a bravura one-hour program featuring two contrasting works. Inspired by the Great Depression, "Black Tuesday" recalls an era when Hollywood movies and popular music offered a glamorous antidote to the hard times facing America. Referring to popular period dance forms and performed to Tin Pan Alley songs of the era, the work reflects the harsh reality and escapism of the times in alternately grim and optimistic terms.
"Promethean Fire" has been greeted with rave reviews and audience ovations, with some critics conjecturing that the piece represents Taylor's response to September 11. "It has grandeur, majesty and a spiritual dimension ... quite simply one of the best dance works choreographed by Paul Taylor," wrote THE NEW YORK TIMES.

According to weather reports, tonight sounds like a good evening to tend the home fires — and just the time to see two recent dances by master choreographer Paul Taylor premiering on PBS at 10. "Act of Ardor: Two Dances by Paul Taylor" shows the master choreographer at the top of his form.
    "Black Tuesday" is a penetrating look at the Great Depression using vaudeville routines, slapstick and popular dancers of the day as the basis for its inventive movement. The choreographer transforms this material in vignettes of down-and-outers and survivors that capture an unsettling mix of defiance, biting humor, clowning camaraderie and despair...
"Promethean Fire," however, is a more difficult challenge for a filmmaker. It's one of Mr. Taylor's grandest compositions, and it's astounding to see such undiminished creativity from an artist after more than four decades of great dance-making.
The problem was how to capture the sense of driving energy Mr. Taylor has mounted in this heroic work set to a monumental Bach score.
No small-screen viewing can possibly replicate the huge impact of the dance onstage, but the camera's eye still brings plenty to treasure.

PBS showcases two works by Paul Taylor Company

By WILMA SALISBURY
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
january 28, 2004

Paul Taylor has made more than 120 dances over the last half-century. But at age 73, he has not begun to exhaust his wellspring of creativity.

"Acts of Ardor: Two Dances by Paul Taylor," the Dance in America presentation that airs tonight on PBS stations, shows the brilliant New York choreographer at the height of his expressive powers.

ARTS: Le Grand Puppetier/ Paul Taylor Dance Co City Center, New York

By HILARY OSTLERE
The Financial Times
March 4, 2004

The world premiere of Le Grand Puppetier is not the first time Paul Taylor has used a Stravinsky score for his own idiosyncratic version of a famous ballet, even though he rarely echoes the original in storyline or choreography.

When Adams Meet Eves in Teletubbyland

By ANNA KISSELGOFF
The New York Times
March 5, 2004

At the end of "In the Beginning," Paul Taylor's screwball-comedy take on the Book of Genesis, an angry Jehovah turns into a forgiving God. Mr. Taylor can be pardoned for "In the Beginning," the New York premiere that the Paul Taylor Dance Company presented on Wednesday night at City Center. It is hardly a masterpiece: it lacks depth but is a whimsical diversion.

A Portent of Death Cast Shadows on a Sunny Flirtation in the Park

By ANNA KISSELGOFF
The New York Times
March 10, 2004

Sad in the revival of "Sunset" and funny in last year's "Dream Girls," Paul Taylor seems in full Janus mode in these two pieces, part of the latest program in the Paul Taylor Dance Company's season at City Center.

Yet ambiguity is Mr. Taylor's middle name, and it is just as easy to read a bittersweet happiness into "Sunset" as it is to ponder the existential loneliness under the comic veneer of "Dream Girls."

Pauline Gospels

By DEBORAH JOWITT
The Village Voice
March 10 - 16, 2004

In his formidable 1980 Sacre du Printemps, Paul Taylor cocked an astute eye at the Diaghilev era of ballet history, the theme of sacrifice, and the lives of dancers. In 2004's Le Grand Puppetier, he mines the Ballets Russes again...

A modern master retains his mystery, 50 years after his company's first steps

Allan Ulrich, Special to The Chronicle

But if any one choreographer has brought the defiant glories of modern dance out of the shadows, eradicated its cult status and suffused it with universal appeal, it is Paul Taylor.