Friday March 4, 2011 - Continuing their season at City Center, Paul Taylor Dance Company presented a very well-contrasted double-bill tonight: SPEAKING IN TONGUES and the Taylor classic ESPLANADE. In both works, Michael Trusnovec (photo above by Tom Caravaglia) was magnificent. Every dancer in the the Company looks superb and there was much to applaud all evening...which is exactly what the attentive - almost reverential - audience did. When Mr. Taylor walked out for a bow at the end, the entire audience stood up and screamed. He deflected all the praise to his dancers.
Michael Trusnovec's opening solo in SPEAKING IN TONGUES was disturbingly beautiful in its passion, danced lyrically but with a dark edge. As the Man of the Cloth, Michael presides over a congregation of mostly unhappy people; guilt, fanaticism and hypocrisy all find a home in the rustic barn where random words of faith and admonishment have been etched or burnt into the wood walls. Jennifer Tipton's flawless lighting sometimes causes these mystic scripts to blaze out.
The Taylor dancers - both as individuals and in ensemble - compellingly portray the various characters who have come to the meetinghouse in search of answers: but in fact there are only more questions. The striking Laura Halzack as the preacher's wife, tall and beautiful James Samson as the preacher's self-vision, the great Taylor dancers Amy Young and Annamaria Mazzini as a mother and her (grown-up) daughter, Jeffrey Smith as Mazzini's husband with a mean streak, the beauteous Parisa Khobdeh as a good-time-gal luring congregants astray, and Robert Kleinendost as the outcast (read: gay) who is beaten into submission, then welcomed into the cult. Completing this handsome cast are Eran Bugge, Aileen Roehl, Michael Novak and Michael Apuzzo.
The score by Matthew Patton is perhaps not specific enough to do more than provide an innocuous sonic background, but the overlain pious ramblings of a radio evangelist drive the work's point home, especially at the end when the fellow is clearly going off the spiritual deep end. The work is probably ten minutes too long; there's a false ending but then it goes on - superbly danced but perhaps already having said all it has to say. In the end, it is Trusnovec's stunning performance that gives the work its heart, and his fellow dancers underscore his vivid interpretation at every moment.
If SPEAKING IN TONGUES is unsettling in its depiction of religion's duplicity, ESPLANADE provides the best solution for mankind's problems: stop fighting and dance. Dance to Bach: so much the better.
ESPLANADE (Robert Kleinendorst and Eran Bugge in Paul B Goode's photo, above) may sound familiar to dance-goers even if they've never seen it before; Taylor uses the same Bach piece to which Balanchine crafted his immortal CONCERTO BAROCCO. ESPLANADE is likely to endure forever too, and it makes a vivid impression on audiences when it is danced with such clarity, assurance and daring as it was tonight.
ESPLANADE calls for nine dancers but you'd swear there were more than that onstage. Tonight the all-star cast (Taylor is an all-star dance troupe) were: Michael Trusnovec, Annamaria Mazzini, Amy Young, Michelle Fleet, Parisa Khobdeh, Sean Mahoney, Eran Bugge, Francisco Graciano and Laura Halzack. Having seen ESPLANADE so many times over the years I was recalling the phenomenal dancers who have taken part in this work and who have been part of this Company since I first saw them and fell in love up at the Pillow in the early 1980s. As the roster of dancers has slowly evolved over the years, each 'family' in its given time-span have somehow seemed perfect. Dancers who were felt to be irreplacable remain vividly in the memory while new and astonishing people find their niche and create their own memorable interpretations.
As ESPLANADE moves from simple walking motifs onward to the amazing feats of the later movements where women get tossed around and Amy Young leads the group in a series of alarming, exciting skid-and-falls, a momentum builds as the viewer's heart and soul get wound up in the sheer delight of watching great dancers in motion. When the fantastical Michelle Fleet finds herself alone onstage at the end of this swirling delight, all she can do is curtsey. The audience erupts in applause and cheers, the only possible reaction.
Kokyat and I were just delighted to see Rachel Berman again; we had met this incredible Taylor dancer when she staged the duet from Taylor's AUREOLE for the 2009 New York International Ballet Competition (when Kokyat first began photographing dance) and we've kept in touch with her ever since. Now she's back in New York City, working with the Company again.
We've also been lucky in the past couple of years to have met Amy Young, Aileen Roehl and Francisco Graciano; and so tonight we did the 'stagedoor Johnny' routine and waited to say hello to them. After an exhausting show, they came out looking fresh as daisies and despite another double-header looming for them the next day, they were just so kind and beautiful.
Flowers flew across the footlights when Annamaria Mazzini (above) came out for her bow. The dancer is giving her final New York performances with the Company during this City Center season. Watching her these past two weeks one would hardly suspect she was even thinking of retiring: so much energy, grace and fluency in her dancing. During ESPLANADE there was a wonderful adagio passage where Annamaria and Michael Trusnovec danced together: the tenderness and mutual admiration in their eyes was so memorable to behold.
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