Many choreographers develop a signature style of movement after years of work. It takes even longer to apply that style in new artistic settings so that it remains both recognizable and fresh.
Choreographer Paul Taylor knows a thing or two about this process — after all, he's spent some 60 years in the studio. The three diverse repertory selections in Saturday night's performance of the Paul Taylor Dance Company at Northrop Auditorium showed how the 84-year-old pioneer continues to inspire his dancers to new heights.
The evening opened with "Aureole" (1962), an early Taylor classic set to music of George Frideric Handel. This work kicked off the choreographer's career-long love of lyricism and bold, space-embracing movement. The five performers (including Roseville native Robert Kleinendorst) all dressed in white, leapt and swirled on Saturday with feather-light ease.
But while the piece seems like a romp — and in many ways it is, albeit a musically sophisticated one — the complexity of the movement phrasing takes "Aureole" to another level altogether. Taylor may have built his vocabulary on a foundation of pedestrian and athletic movement, but there is nothing simple about the shifts in direction, level and speed in this piece.
"Beloved Renegade," from 2008, delves into darker thematic territory: memory and death. Based on the poetry of Walt Whitman, the work celebrates "the body electric" but its focus is really on the eternal sleep.
Michael Trusnovec was a whirlwind of energy, traveling through the Whitman story of childhood games, loves won and lost, and finally his funeral. Accompanied by Francis Poulenc's choir-fueled "Gloria" the work is a bit bombastic in its elegiac messaging, but Trusnovec's superb dancing offered a poignant emotional counterpoint.
If the evening didn't already close with "Piazzolla Caldera" (1997) it would have served as the showstopper. Set to exquisite live music performed by Pablo Ziegler's New Tango Ensemble, the work combines the world's most passionate dance form with Taylor's innate ability to depict sensual tension.
Sharp turns, stutter steps, sinewy thrusts all combine into the physical embodiment of Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Peterburshsky's music. While all the dancers tackled the work on Saturday with equal verve, Michelle Fleet, Francisco Graciano, Michael Apuzzo and Trusnovec were particularly stellar as they wrestled with the competing demons of desire and disdain that define a good tango.
