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Tackling Taylor: The Washington Ballet Company Goes Modern
| Article
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14089 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1988 |
1,723 Words |
| Author
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Alexandra Tomalonis
Alexandra Tomalonis is the editor of Washington Danceview
magazine and a frequent writer in the area of dance. |
America is filled with regional ballet companies eager to achieve instant world-class status by staging scaled-down versions of nineteenth-century classics like Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, often with less than world-class results. But some companies choose another road. The Washington Ballet Company proudly retains its chamber size (nineteen full-time members and three apprentices this year) and its emphasis on contemporary neoclassical choreography. Mary Day, founder and artistic director of the troupe, has always tried to fashion as individual a repertoire as possible, staying away from overfamiliar works, and commissioning as many new ballets as the budget allows. If the company has a goal, it is to perform only works it can do well and can afford to mount. Day has been as insistent--and successful--at running the company's books in the black as she has been in building an internationally respected company.
The company, which spent October dancing in its two hometowns, Washington and Baltimore, began its eleventh season with an especially strong program built from the three keystones of its repertoire--a twentieth-century classic by George Balanchine, a work by resident choreographer and associate director Choo-San Goh, and an experiment or novelty (this time a contemporary masterpiece by modern-dance choreographer Paul Taylor). That the company triumphed with the latter work was a delightful surprise.
Big, Easy Style
Ballet companies have been acquiring Taylor's dances as fast as he will let them. His big, easy style is admired by dancers, critics, and audiences alike. Many consider him the most creative choreographer working in dance today. Although Taylor has certainly produced his share of thought-producing, even puzzling, works, there is something instantly accessible about his dances that appeals as much to those whose only experience with dance has been the local annual Nutcracker as to the most sophisticated balletomane.
But the ease is deceptive, and ballet companies are usually unsuccessful at capturing the Taylor style--the looseness, the off-kilter moves, the genial kookiness of it. Another problem is that the dancers in Taylor's small (about a dozen dancers) company are handpicked to form a sculptural rainbow, as it were, of heights, weights, builds, and styles. This variety among performers is as much a part of the architecture of a Taylor dance as the steps, and ballet dancers--handpicked by their companies to be as much alike as possible in height, weight, build, and style--have a built-in handicap
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