American Dance Festival Presents PAUL TAYLOR DANCE Review

Quirky gestures mix with ballet fluidity. The dancers are a hive of preying mantisses with limbs that fly weightlessly into grand battements or pirhouettes , but also crunch into frozen exoskeleton stiffness. Classic ballet moves mix with quirky gestures.

Scenic designer Sarah Crowner has created a doodle-like frame that the dancers pick up and move from time to time. It is an oversized prop that often echoes the curls and bends of the dancers. The lighting effects by Brandon Stirling Baker move the dancers and prop into and out of black silhouette while Schubert’s strings croon on.

Does this description sound too abstract and interpretive to you? So be it, we learn from current and second Paul Taylor Dance Artistic Director Michael Novak, who explains that Paul Taylor thought of dance as akin to poetry, purposely ambiguous to allow us to interact with the work and apply our own mind’s imprimatur of interpretation.

However we interpret and fill in the blanks there is one constant everyone in the hall will most certainly agree upon, is this reviewer’s guess— the energy and athleticism of the flawless Paul Taylor dancers ignites these moving poems with fire.

Paul Taylor Dance Stages A Work Inspired by Folies Bergère at American Dance Festival

Choreographer Jody Sperling— who has dedicated her craft to making art that rouses audiences to battling climate change— had drawn from her studies of Loie Fuller’s work at the Folies Bergère that some credit as a breakthrough to contemporary dance experiments since. Performing Sperling’s work Claire de Lune, dancer Emmy Wildermuth gracefully flaps the oversized wings of her costume evoking clouds billowing in moonlight. In this performance David Ferri’s lighting effects provoke quiet gasps of appreciation all around us.

Classic Paul Taylor Choreography— Byzantium

Based on a Yeats poem as a launch point— or poems— that are interpreted widely to be about mortaility and death— Byzantium is the work of the evening that hews most closely to a narrative structure. Curiously, the new music gives the work a film noir feel. For this writer, the storyline eludes, and the program notes of named roles in each dance made for more muddle. That said, the choreography continues to give us a chance to admire the dancers’ power. It feels Olympian through and through.

Robert Battle's UNDER THE RHYTHM Is A Send-Off With Joy

After the breathtaking opener by Tanowitz, you too might be thinking it is a very high bar to meet, and a difficult act to follow. How delicious that Resident Choreographer Robert Battle meets the challenge and lets us leave the hall with a lilt in our step.

A mélange of music melds spirituals with jazz. In black bowlers and spats the dancers remind of Charlie Chaplin multiplied many times over. Battle seems, like Chaplin, to want us to keep smiling. He serves us splits in the air and splits on the floor, fast synching moves to a jazzy horn, and a duo donning red costumes who spiral off into animating a scat singing soundscape. It is rehearsed and programmed but channeling the improv spirit of scat that is joy exponential.

Under the Rhythm is FUN, FUN, FUN and a high note to send us home.