BALLET
Taylor made
CLEMENT CRISP
By the time you read these words the most extraordinary balletic marathon that London has known in years will have got under way. During the course of July no less than eight ballet companies will be seen in the capital and within two months about a quarter of a million seats will, we hope, have been sold. This summer, though, will have to be even more exceptional than it already promises if it brings choreography finer than Paul Taylor's.
Two programmes last week at Sadler's Wells—where Taylor and his company are playing until 11 July—showed just how grand and inventive a creator he is. The Apollo of contemporary dance, his ballets grip heart and mind by their beautiful clarity, their formal elegance, wit and richness of imagery. Where other modern dance practitioners can seem gimmicky, vulgar, ill-disciplined, Taylor is classical in his understanding of dance as a sure and sufficient expressive medium.
His season opened, uncompromisingly enough, with Churchyard, a view of the dance of death both agonised and com- passionate. The music is a collection of seemingly jolly mediaeval tunes, but over and through it we can hear the roar of some terrible wind that blows from beyond the grave; Taylor shows us the hectic rout of a danse macabre in which the partioipants gradually become swollen-jointed, crippled, tormented by disease and lust. (Readers of Harrison Ainsworth will recognise the despairing dances of the plague victims in Old St Pauls).
As gripping in their way—which is the way of pure dance—are two other pieces: Private Domain, which gives us enigmatic hints rather than direct statements: deliberately so, since the dances are in part hidden from us by panels hung across the front of the stage, and Post Meridian in which eddies of movement and relationships form and disperse.
In Public Domain we laugh loud and long, because Taylor has the rare choreographic gift of being able to be funny about dancing and about people. The score is a frenzied patchwork from the 'great masters' which Taylor uses as a basis for broad humour, ec- centric fun, and some very sharp 'in-jokes' about choreographers, including himself. In- cidents such as two girls getting into difficulties with each other as a Brahms' duet flows sweetly on, or a male dancer being badgered by Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture are characteristic of a splendidly jokey and light- hearted talent. The company is, not surpris- ingly, fine, and Taylor himself is a superb performer: I cannot urge you too strongly to go and see these riches for yourself.
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