Berkshires arts reviews

July 19, 2007 performance reviewed by Connell McGrath

Paul Taylor Dance Company performs July 18 through July 22, as part of Jacob’s Pillow’s 75th anniversary season. They are performing two programs on alternating evenings. Both programs include a world premiere of a work called De Suenos commissioned in part by Jacob’s Pillow for its anniversary season. The performers and Paul Taylor’s company are outstanding.

The Company revives a 1962 work called Aureole to begin the program 2. This is a great example of Taylor’s early work and deserves its comeback. Orion Duckstien deserves particular mention for his performance of the male lead. This is a simple and powerful work set to excerpts from Handel’s Concerti Grossi in C and F.

Next, the company performed Troilus and Cressida (reduced) from 2006. This is an amusing, frivolous slapstick set to Dance of the Hours by a composer named Ponchielli. Fun and mercifully short.

After the first intermission came the debut work called De Suenos set to music from the Kronos Quartet’s 2002 recording called Nuevo. I wish I had better things to say about this Pillow commissioned work. The program notes include the following quotation by Carl Jung: “So difficult is it to understand a dream that…I make it a rule…to say first of all to myself ‘I have no idea what this dream means.’”

The essential idea behind this piece is that symbolic gestures and images are open to all kinds of interpretation. The audience brings meaning to what’s presented by modern art. This is an old but valuable idea, and this piece is full of gestures, images, costumes, and decor from Jung’s universal archetypes that can be interpreted in all kinds of ways. What the piece is missing is good, engaging dance.

Wisely, the Company ends with Promethean Fire (2002) set to Bach. This is a tremendous tour de force of Taylor’s best, current work. His choreography in this piece shows such a mastery of group movement on the stage that it was breathtaking to watch. 16 dancers, 8 men and 8 women, performing fast, complex group floor work that creates intricate, evolving patterns on the stage.

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