Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY unveils Lauren Lovette’s “Echo” in an uncommonly cohesive boys verses girls program

• By drediman
• November 5, 2023
• No Comments

Last night at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, I attended a performance by Paul Taylor Dance Company, which is currently in the midst of its two-week New York fall season. The program was uncommonly cohesive, featuring a trio of ballets that laid out a sort of battle of the sexes.

The boys verses girls program commenced with the unveiling Echo, Lauren Lovette’s world premiere dance for an all-male cast. Lovette, the company’s resident choreographer, brought refreshing sensitivity in her ode to maleness – unafraid to excavate the vulnerability, the confusion, and the playfulness underneath the machismo and bravado men usually display to the world. In this intangible regard, the piece exhibits admirable similarities to works by fellow choreographer Kyle Abraham. Set to a “Rite of Spring” meets Aaron Copland composition by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts (played gorgeously by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the soulful all-male string trio Time for Three), the dance represents a step forward for Lovette, whose tendency to put forward half-formed choreographic thoughts was mostly tempered in this outing. Instead, she presented a fairly articulate and at times poetic portrait of the multitudes that exist within maleness.

The program continued with two existing works — one a company premiere, the other from the company’s vast repertoire. The company premiere was Ulysses Dove’s all-female Vespers, a pointed response to the previous work. Set to a driving percussive score, the piece eschews the flowing nature of Lovette’s work in favor of presenting focused and defined (perhaps too prescribed?) stage pictures. It’s an anguished, frustrated dance that suggests the fraught, repressed psyche of the female sex. The evening reached its inevitable conclusion with Piazzolla Caldera – Paul Taylor’s crowd-pleasing riff on the Argentinean tango – during which the sexes clashed together in a turbulent choreographic battle royal filled with tension, lust, and drama. The tension extended to the choreography, which alluringly juxtaposed the tautness of tango with the freedom and openness of the Taylor aesthetic.

Throughout, the Paul Taylor Dance Company dancers looked fantastic, acquiescing themselves effortlessly between three distinct modes of choreographic expression. Indeed, just in the time I’ve seen the company since live performances were allowed to come back, they’ve grown noticeably both as individual performers and collectively as a company.

RECOMMENDED

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY
Dance
David H. Koch Theater
Approximately 2 hours (with two intermissions)
Through November 12