Also this issue:

Feeling the '50s
CP's theater critics go Crazy for 1812 Productions’ stellar homage to 1950s comedy.
-David Anthony Fox and Toby Zinman

Taste Treat
Kitsch and high art cohabitate at Wexler Gallery's current show.
-Susan Hagen

Dolls to Remember
-Robin Rice

Philly-Nutt-Crak-Up
-Kristina Weise

Cirque loize
-Deni Kasrel

Santa Claus is Coming Out
-Debra Auspitz

Artifacts of the Improbable
-Paul Burress

The Consul
-Lou Camp

December 12-18, 2002

dance

Paul Taylor Dance

by Janet Anderson

The Paul Taylor Dance ensemble was at the Annenberg Center over the weekend demonstrating, if such proof was needed, just why Taylor remains a modern dance icon, as well as one of the most watchable choreographers working. And for the record, Taylor is now 71 years old. Dance Celebration teamed up with the Curtis Institute of Music for two Taylor dances, with students providing live, first-class accompaniment -- it’s doubtful anyone in the audience guessed these weren’t pros traveling with the troupe since they seemed a totally integral part of the performance.

The new-to-Philly piece, Black Tuesday, was a dance-essay about the Great Depression of the 1930s. Here is Paul Taylor at his most recognizable. Anyone familiar with his Company B, which explores the World War II era via Andrews Sisters pop songs and 1940s social dance, will recognize Black Tuesday's template. Tuesday was created for American Ballet Theater last year, but the dance is pure Taylor, which means modern dance so filled with leaps and turns that it equally suits modern or ballet dancers.

The eight Depression-era pop songs are virtually unknown now ("Slummin' on Park Avenue," for one), yet each has the 1930s popular music double whammy of sad lyrics sung to bouncy, cheery music. There's lots of elbows-out-and-knees-up social dancing mingling with the slides and jetes. Plus, it's visually handsome with Santo Loquasto contributing elegant, dark-toned tatters and togs as well as arresting cityscape backdrops. Lisa Viola made a charming little hobo in "I Went Hunting and the Big Bad Wolf was Dead," while Annmaria Mazzini dazzled in her star turn, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." A subtext of personal despair percolated below the good humor, nowhere more pointedly than in the finale, where Patrick Corbin led the ensemble in a fast-paced "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" while the shadow people that Taylor loves filed across the background -- bankers and hobos, all down on their luck.

Two much earlier (1970s) and less didactic Taylor works filled out the program. Images used the evocative music of Debussy and costumes seemingly inspired by ancient Minoan-Cretan fresco figures to suggest mythic, or maybe just archaic, moods. Taylor's not simply an artist, he's a showman, so he ended the program with Esplanade, which had dancers running, tumbling, rolling and endlessly falling down to the music of Bach. It's death-defying and crazy, and marvelous to watch.

Paul Taylor Dance, Dec. 6, Annenberg Center