A scene from Paul Taylor’s Promethean Fire. (Photo by Paul B. Goode)
By Tara Mitton Catao
When a choreographer creates — even one as prolific a master as Paul Taylor — not every work is of the same caliber. And with Taylor, who has so many genres of work that he creates, it gets even more complicated. But suffice it to say that his Promethean Fire is a definite keeper. It showed Taylor at his best.
In this work, Taylor used his familiar movement, which is now so easily recognized as the stock Taylor vocabulary, but it was so brilliantly designed that one almost didn’t recognize the steps. They were embedded in something deeper and were only being used as a conduit to relay the message. But here’s the thing: the message (as is often the case in dance) wasn’t explicit. Many dance viewers enjoy this but this un-explicitness can also leave many viewers confused or even intimidated.
For a start, Promethean Fire was not about the myth of Prometheus. A constant moving horde of dancers forged paths looking like they were 100 strong even though it was only the 18 members of the company dressed in stylish, black velvet overalls. Designed by long-time collaborator Santo Loquasto, they had a satin chevron pattern that spiraled around the torso and down each leg which gave a dressed-up look to the work.
When the curtain first rose on this work, which was last on the program at the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth on Saturday night, the performers stood motionless facing us – perhaps even challenging us. But was there a sense of hope present?
The way the dancers approached the barrage of movement exposed a shared fortitude even though they crumbled, falling upon each other, during their constant attempt at flight. It has been said that this work was Taylor’s response to the horror of the 9/11 attacks but it is not something that is apparent.
The choice for music was also interesting. It was from the all-time favorite, animated ,Disney film Fantasia made in 1940. Taylor used Leopold Stokowski’s orchestration of several of Johann Sebastian Bach’s pieces that are so familiar in that popular movie score.
At least seven of Taylor’s works have been choreographed to Bach’s wonderful music. Though Bach never wrote music for the dance, his music is eminently danceable and it has been used by numerous choreographers over the years, but it is in Taylor’s works that one can literally see the musical structure in the movement and patterns itself.
In Promethean Fire, there was a lot of serious dancing from all of the dancers pretty much all of the time and it contained some of Taylor’s most challenging and unusual lifts. At one point, eight couples were lined up across the stage with the men cradling the women in their arms. Suddenly, in complete unison, the women were just tossed over the men’s left shoulders ending perched up high of the upper back of their partner.
There was also this peculiar lift where the woman rolled upwards and encircled the man’s head with her body like a giant trap. She looked like a huge Silence of the Lambs mask that not only blinded the man but weighted him down.
Another spectacular lift was the fish dive towards the end where a woman ran from the wing and threw herself with sheer risk-taking abandon head first into the stage space and somehow was caught by a man near the opposite wing.
Parisa Khobdeh and Michael Trusnovec were the central couple that grounded the group in the plotless yet quite dramatic work. After all the crossing, circling and weaving patterns, the bare minimal movement of Trusnovec pulling Khobdeh slowly out from the rubble of human bodies to stand and raise an arm paired with a major crescendo in the music was a powerful image because of the utter simplicity of the sudden lack of movement in contrast to the burgeoning in the musical score.
The two other works that preceded Promethean Fire were less arresting. Images was mythological in its look with its Grecian-inspired costumes by Gene Moore and its rich lighting design by Mark Litvin. The dancers, pressed against the dark background, were warmly illuminated from the side making them look like the flattened figures that adorned Athenian vases and friezes.
The 1977 work used selections from Images, Children’s Corner and Pour Le Piano by Claude Debussy and depicted Taylor’s movement with a Greek motif.
In Polaris, we were offered the opportunity to see in close proximity how steps in set choreography can differ when they are danced to different music and interpreted by different dancers.
Both the stark, half-black and half-white minimalistic costumes by Alex Katz and the music, which was specially composed for this work by Donald York, further enhanced the work’s theme of polarity.
Five dancers started onstage arranged in and around a cube-shaped metal frame. Part I was the perkier version — more upbeat and fluid, while Part II was a forceful interpretation — more severe and percussive even though step by step, it was exactly the same choreography. Though the concept was somewhat academic, it was interesting to watch and see the conclusive results.
In between the two parts, there was a silence where, one by one, a dancer exited and another (dressed in an identical costume) entered to replace him or her. But, in this performance, due to another dancer’s injury, Eran Bugge just made a circle and returned to her spot where she repeated her same part with new music and a new interpretation. This repeat person in the casting further accentuated the transformation in the choreography as we experienced with enhanced fascination the same dancer’s different rendering of the same steps in the same part.
The duet, first danced by Madelyn Ho and Sean Mahoney and in Part II by Khobdeh and Trusnovec, remained the best part of the six sections in both versions, though the strong and imposing Laura Halzack was memorable in her solo in Part I.