Paul Taylor

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Paul Taylor 1930–, American modern-dance choreographer, b. Pittsburgh. Taylor trained as an artist before he received scholarships to study dance. In 1953 he made his debut with the Merce Cunningham company and performed his first dance composition. From 1955 to 1961 he won acclaim both as a leading soloist with the Martha Graham company and as the creator of witty and innovative avant-garde dances for his own company, which he had formed in 1954. He has choreographed more than 100 works, including Jack and the Beanstalk (1954), Aureole (1962), Esplanade (1975), Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal) (1980), Company B (1991), The Word (1998), Arabesque (2000), Promethean Fire (2002), Beloved Renegade (2008), and Brief Encounters (2009). His later works generally have been less radical than his earlier ones.

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Private Domain (1987); The Paul Taylor Dance Company (video, 1978).

Taylor, Paul (b Edgewood, Pa., 29 July 1930). US dancer, choreographer, and company director. Having trained extensively as a swimmer, he took up dance while studying art at Syracuse University on a swimming scholarship. Moving to New York in 1952, he went on to study modern dance with Graham, Humphrey, Limón, and Cunningham, and ballet with Tudor and Craske. He danced with Cunningham (1954) and Lang (1955) and, most importantly, with the Martha Graham Dance Company (1955–62). He created the role of Aegisthus in her Clytemnestra (1958), the Stranger in Embattled Garden (1958), a leading role in her Alcestis (1960), Acrobats of God (1960), and a role in Episodes (1959), the joint Graham-Balanchine work in which Balanchine choreographed a solo for Taylor. He founded his own company in 1954, only a year after making his first piece. He collaborated with the painter Robert Rauschenberg and, like him, worked as a window dresser at Tiffany's, the New York jewellers, in order to finance his early works. Their first collaboration was Jack and the Beanstalk (1954); Rauschenberg then designed all of Taylor's works in the 1950s, including Three Epitaphs (1956) and Seven New Dances (1957). With his company he travelled the world and consolidated his position as one of the giants of American modern dance. Like Graham before him, he helped to re-define the parameters of modern dance in the 20th century, encompassing a wide range of influences into his choreography and producing some of the most accessible modern dance to be found anywhere. He was an early experimenter: Duet (1957), part of his Seven New Dances evening, saw him and his pianist not moving for the entire duration of the piece, set to John Cage's ‘non-score’; the critic Louis Horst responded to Seven New Dances by giving it a blank review space in Dance Observer. Almost twenty years later Esplanade saw Taylor using a vernacular movement vocabulary that consisted of nothing more sophisticated than walking, running, jumping, and falling. His 1980 The Rehearsal, a reworking of The Rite of Spring, was typically imaginative: it combined a tale of gangsters and kidnapping with Nijinsky's original ballet. His 1991 Second World Warera Company B was Taylor at his most nostalgic and emotional. His works can be roughly divided into three camps: the joyously lyrical, the whimsically humorous, and the darkly psychological. Because his buoyant and often flowing style shares many characteristics with ballet, his works can be found in the repertoires of classical companies the world over, including the Royal Danish Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. Aureole, Airs, and Arden Court, three of his sunniest pieces, are particularly popular among ballet-goers. He retired from dancing in 1974. A list of his works includes 3 Epitaphs (mus. Laneville-Johnson Union Brass Band, 1956), Seven New Dances (mus. Cage and various sounds, 1957), Images and Reflections (mus. Feldman, 1958), Meridian (mus. Boulez, later Feldman, 1960), Fibers (mus. Schoenberg, 1960), Insects and Heroes (mus. John Herbert McDowell, 1961), Junction (mus. Bach, 1961), Tracer (mus. James Tenny, 1962), Piece Period (mus. various, 1962), Aureole (mus. Handel, 1962), Poetry in Motion (mus. L. Mozart, 1963), Scudorama (mus. Clarence Jackson, 1963), Party Mix (mus. Haieff, 1963), Duet (mus. Haydn, 1964), Post Meridian (mus. E. Lohoeffer de Boeck, 1965), From Sea to Shining Sea (mus. McDowell, 1965), Orbs (mus. Beethoven, 1966), Agathe's Tale (mus. Surinach, 1967), Lento (mus. Haydn, 1967), Public Domain (mus.-collage McDowell, 1968), Churchyard (mus. Cosmos Savage, 1969), Private Domain (mus. Xenakis, 1969), Foreign Exchange (mus. Morton Subotnick, 1970), Big Bertha (mus. Band Machines from the St Louis Melody Museum, 1970), The Book of Beasts (mus. vars., 1971), Guests of May (mus. Debussy, 1972), American Genesis (mus. vars., 1973), Sports and Follies (mus. Satie, 1974), Esplanade (mus. Bach, 1975), Runes (mus. Gerald Busby, 1975), Cloven Kingdom (mus. Corelli, Cowell, 1976), Polaris (mus. Donald York, 1976), Images (mus. Debussy, 1977), Dust (mus. Poulenc, 1977), Aphrodisiamania (mus. vars., 1977), Airs (mus. Handel, 1978), Diggity (mus. D. York, 1978), Nightshade (mus. Scriabin, 1979), The Rehearsal (mus. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, 1980), Arden Court (mus. William Boyce, 1981), House of Cards (mus. Milhaud, 1981), Lost, Found and Lost (mus. ‘wallpaper’ muzak, 1982), Mercuric Tidings (mus. Schubert, 1982), Musette (mus. Handel, 1983), Sunset (mus. Elgar, 1983), Byzantium (mus. Varèse, 1984), Last Look (mus. York, 1985), Musical Offering (mus. Bach, 1986), Kith and Kin (mus. Mozart, 1987), Syzygy (mus. York, 1987), Brandenburgs (mus. Bach, 1988), Counterswarm (mus. Ligeti, 1988), Danbury Mix (mus. Ives, 1988), Speaking in Tongues (mus. Matthew Patton, 1988), Minikin Fair (mus. vars., 1989), The Sorcerer's Sofa (mus. Dukas, 1990), Of Bright and Blue Birds and the Gala Sun (mus. Donald York, 1990), Fact and Fancy (mus. New Orleans jazz and reggae, 1991), Company B (mus. The Andrews Sisters, 1991), Oz (mus. Wayne Horvitz, 1992), Spindrift (mus. Schoenberg, 1993), Field of Grass (mus. Harry Nilsson, 1993), Funny Papers (1994), Moonbine (mus. Debussy, 1994), Offenbach Overtures (1995), Prime Numbers (mus. David Israel, 1996), Eventide (mus. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1996), Piazzolla Caldera (mus. Astor Piazzolla, 1997), The Word (mus. David Israel, 1998), Oh, You Kid! (mus. ragtime, 1999), Cascade (mus. Bach, 1999), Black Tuesday (2001), and Promethean Fire (mus. Bach, 2002). Emmy Award (for television production of Speaking in Tongues), 1991. Subject of the 1999 film documentary Dancemaker. Kennedy Center Award, Washington, DC, 1992. Author of autobiography Private Domain (New York, 1987).