Houston Ballet and Paul Taylor Dance Company, Choreography by Paul Taylor, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington
A mixed bill, a mixed bag.
Taylor's company opened with Offenbach Overtures (1995). This is a piece that would not be out of place as an entr'acte for an evening of Gilbert and Sullivan. Everyone gets to ham it up a bit. There is an opportunity for Lisa Viola to do one of those comic turns she does, her expression an unpleasant cross-eyed rictus.
Though this material is still physically challenging, I catch a whiff of camembert.
As I watched Houston Ballet begin the slow drift onstage that begins Company B (1991), as if everyone were shell-shocked and looking for an hour's peace in a USO club, and as I think about the men and women that we've placed in harm's way this spring, it's easy to get a little choked up. It's been 12 years and another war since this company
presented this work to the world.
Nicholas Leschke does the bullet dance that is "Tico-Tico," and nails it. Britain Werkheiser brings a sexiness to "Rum and Coca-Cola" that I don't remember seeing before. And Laura Richards brings an incandescent smile to "Pennsylvania Polka."
The male soloists showed fast, tight, balletic turns in their dancing.
My only complaint is with the company's makeup, which is designed for the back rows of the balcony. The contrast with PT's natural faces was glaring.
After intermission, Houston premiered In the Beginning, set to
a woodwind arrangement of songs from Carmina Burana and other
works of Orff.
The Genesis stories often defeat artists, and Taylor is no exception.
There is a nice little series of begats set to the "everyone drinks" music. Once this piece comes to an arbupt halt, there's no need to recall it.
The Taylors returned for what I take to be our first chance to see Promethean Fire (2002) in D.C.
The core of this too-short wonder is the passage set to Bach's D minor fugue (as orchestrated by Stokowski). The dance is about ensemble movement: everyone wears the same black unitard slashed by thin diagonal bronze stripes. The dance is about speed: Taylor must have been reading Doug Varone's playbook, because I've never seen his dancers move so fast before. The dance is about fire: set against a black drop, the entire company scissoring across the stage sets it aflame.
The dance is about heroism: the huge Parnassian lifts had me gaping.
