The Paul Taylor Dance Company is running on the theme of expansion this season. It has a bigger new building in Midtown; its repertory is growing with new dances and there is even a new resident choreographer.
But the programs I saw revealed that this is a time when you need Paul Taylor, who died in 2018, to be alive and choreographing dances that have something to say about the landscape of America — whether dark or satirical, hopeful or passionate. Or a mix. His brilliance was in pointing at the delicate lines between light and dark, in showing how dance marches alongside real life in ways that wake up the body and stir the soul.
The new works presented by the Taylor company during its opening week at Lincoln Center stood out more for their brevity and anodyne ideas than their choreographic force. Along with two premieres by Lauren Lovette, there was a tribute to the former company member Carolyn Adams, by Robert Battle; and a homage to Loïe Fuller, a modern dance pioneer known for her experiments with light and costume, by Jody Sperling.
There was also an announcement at the company’s gala dinner on Wednesday: Battle, the former artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, has been appointed resident choreographer alongside Lovette, who has held the position since 2022.
Battle has long admired Taylor’s dances — he brought his repertoire to the Ailey company — but it’s not so clear how he might expand the Taylor legacy. Battle’s Adams tribute “Dedicated to You,” his first piece for the company, demonstrated that he has an arsenal of Taylor steps in his brain, but is less nimble at making something new out of them.
A three-part solo for Jada Pearman, “Dedicated to You” places the title song, sung by Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine, between two Bach works. Battle refers to Taylor’s legacy as well as to Adams’s, inserting quotations from the Taylor repertoire throughout — spirited slicing jumps, slides to the floor, skittering runs — as Pearman, wearing an iridescent blue dress with unfortunate torso cutouts (by Santo Loquasto), inhabits three sensibilities: She is dignified, flirtatious and, finally, full of buoyant dancing life.
At first, Pearman is solemn as she lifts a knee to the side before planting her foot and raising her arms with the palms turned in and then facing out. That gesture becomes more playful in the Vaughan-Eckstine segment, where she relishes being the center of attention. In the end, Pearman is full of daring, echoing Adams’s fleet, seamless way of gliding across a stage. The winks to Taylor dances, however, were more cloying than clever, and for all of Pearman’s valiant dancing, the solo left behind a flatness born of mimicry.
Lovette presented two premieres, “Chaconne in Winter” and “Recess,” set to Errollyn Wallen‘s Concerto Grosso. “Recess” has its name for a reason: It’s set at what seems to be an actual school recess, but this doesn’t feel like the time to be acting like children in a dance.
The set, a rainbow of colorful panels by Libby Stadstad, frames the stage, while the costumes by Mark Eric are essentially playsuits for grown-ups. The first image is of five dancers in silhouette, their bodies balanced on one another to form a human sculpture in the distinct style — unfortunately — of the acrobatic dance group Pilobolus.
Lee Duveneck, Austin Kelly and Jessica Ferretti form a jaunty trio, while Pearman and Alex Clayton are a more introspective couple whose relationship remains vague as their duet drifts from one choreographic thought to the next. Snippets like hopscotch and playground clapping games pop out of the bigger picture. Two dancers use their arms like bars of a jungle gym as another flips in between them. The dancers buzz like busy bees, filling the space with energy and whimsy, but “Recess” has little edge. The same is true of Lovette’s other premiere, “Chaconne in Winter.”
It opens with a striking image: Three musicians on a darkened stage, each standing under spotlights on raised platforms. The music, by Bach and Justin Vernon, is performed live by the string ensemble Time for Three — Charles Yang and Nicolas Kendall on violin and Ranaan Meyer on bass — a group Lovette featured in last season’s penetrating “Echo.”
As soon as the dancers Madelyn Ho and John Harnage enter from opposite sides of the stage, their bodies merge with the flow of sound. They reach their hands forward and spin as their arms lift, transforming their forms into glittering tornadoes. Lovette writes that she was thinking about snowflakes falling under a night sky for “Chaconne,” and the dance does evoke a spiraling, whirling chill.
But “Chaconne,” beautifully lit by Brandon Stirling Baker, sticks to that single note. It’s pretty and forgettable, like an icy flake that melts as soon as it hits the ground.
Sperling’s “Vive La Loïe!” brings Fuller’s legacy to life in a solo for Ferretti, who is perched on a high platform and whose arms stir a voluminous dress into motion — waterfalls, waves and curling petals — as it catches the light. Set to selections of Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi, “Vive” fills the stage with magic, courtesy of David Ferri’s lighting, which casts the fabric in shades of blue, lilac, yellow and red. Ferretti is a magician, too, as she manipulates the fabric to obscure her body or to flutter majestically, just like a white-winged dove. She is Stevie Nicks, enhanced and floating on a cloud.
If all these works have mild charms, reality sets in when you realize how pronounced the contrast is between this season’s premieres and Taylor’s work. His command of structure is spellbinding. “Funny Papers” (1994), a work created in collaboration with his dancers, is still just as funny as ever. “Aureole” (1962) is still like waking up to the freshest dawn. And there is also the way his dances — even without him around to coach — allow these dancers to be seen, not just as performers but as people. As the podcast Dance and Stuff has it, there is dance, and there is stuff. Taylor is dance.
“Promethean Fire” (2002), which wrapped up the company’s gala evening, may or may not have been Taylor’s response to the attacks of Sept. 11. (At the time, he said that if he had anything in mind, it was Disney’s “Fantasia.”) It needs more risk, particularly in what should be a daring moment in which a dancer sprints across the stage and throws herself into her partner’s arms in a leap of desperation. But it remains blistering, resolute in its grandeur. It’s not stuff.
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