Paul Taylor Dance Company Review – Hail to the Athlete Gods! | Dance

pOl Taylor is no satirist’s choreographer. Then again, maybe it’s exactly what the cynic needs. At the beginning of his 1988 piece “Brandenburg,” with dancers in tight green velvet smiling at us delightfully, a hardened viewer might think: This is a bit of an old-fashioned little piece. Twenty-five minutes later, after a tornado of jumping, spinning and perfecting techniques, you think about how much fun it is to be alive.

Taylor was one of the most prominent and celebrated figures in American modern dance, leading his company for more than 60 years until his death in 2018. The company first visited the UK in 1964, but had not visited London for more than 20 years. (In this short tour, they also dance a second programme, including Taylor’s recent work Concertiana, from 2018.)

As in Brandenburg, where two of Bach’s eponymous concertos (No. 3 and No. 6) are set, Taylor’s dance is often cheerful and courageous, clearly defined in its elegant angles, and unafraid to entertain. It’s lively and full of postcard moments – a shot at any moment will reveal dancers in beautiful open positions, or leaping with huge expanses of air between their feet and the floor. Every step is recognizable, readable, digestible and musical. Despite the fast sprint speeds and dizzying number of turns, this dance harkens back to simpler analogue times, not the current era’s onslaught of everything.

The women wear green Grecian-style dresses and look somewhat Olympian: there is a scene reminiscent of Apollo and his muses, and some Euclidean geometry at play. The dancers look like athletes of the gods, if we misquote Martha Graham, although the god they worship may be Bach.

The company now has resident choreographers creating new works, as well as maintaining Taylor’s archive. The most recent is Robert Battle, former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. His piece “Under the Rhythm” aims to honor Patel’s mother and the power of dance to see us through life; It feels like a toast to the glories of African-American jazz and modern dance, from the raucous rhythm of the Harlem dance floor, to two dancers in red coats, looking a bit like the Nicholas Brothers, making it up to an Ella Fitzgerald quiff. Can you infer a reference to Ailey, and is it just me or is that Carlton’s dance from The Fresh Prince? There’s an undercurrent of some pain and prejudice that lies beneath those stories, but there’s also pure ingenuity and showmanship.

There are no smiles in Taylor’s “Piazzolla Caldera” (1997), only menacingly smoldering gazes. It’s a feisty, tango-inspired piece that resonates with expectations of Buenos Aires’ seedy underworld. All those dramatically furrowed brows signaling climax seem rather stressful, and yet it’s never easy to watch. This is a dance that wants its audience to enjoy, and it would be hard not to.