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New York Times
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Churchyard' and ‘Tablet' Review: Irreverence and Resurrection
Paul Taylor isn't commonly discussed as a religious choreographer, but religious themes run through the nearly 150 dances he made across six decades. That his perspective was usually irreverent doesn't mean it was unserious. William Blake, explaining why Satan has the best lines in John Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' wrote that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it.' Taylor's dances often seem to suggest that we're all of the devil's party and that it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise, but also that the implications of that truth could be very dark. Take 'Churchyard' (1969), one of the two works that the Paul Taylor Dance Company has reconstructed for its run at the Joyce Theater this week. It starts with a woman wearing what looks like a nun's wimple, her palms pressed together in prayer. The accompanying music sounds medieval, and the actions of the dancers who soon join her are both prayerful and pastoral, almost Edenic. Halfway through the dance, though, these images are replaced with the cavorting of devils or maybe the damned. Now with bulges like tumors in their costumes, the dancers fling themselves around in gnarled, twisted positions, jumping like frogs and scratching themselves. The men carry the women upside down, and the woman from the beginning, now a siren-like figure in a cape, swings her head to slap the ground with her braid. It's like a Hieronymus Bosch painting with touches of go-go dancing. Taylor called the work's two sections 'Sacred' and 'Profane.' But the sacred half isn't pure. The score — by the semi-forgotten avant-gardist Andrew Sarchiapone, who called himself Cosmos Savage — mixes in sounds of storms, which could also be a bowling alley next door. The innocent interactions between men and women are so chivalrous that they're arch, with hints of lust and trouble in paradise. The perversity of the choreographer-god seeps in with impossible-to-hold balances (set to fast music) and cruelly slow descents to the floor. The profane section is more fun, with naughty bits. But it is fun for us, not for the lost souls. There's desperation in their frantic activity. They seem compelled. And if their fate is ours, this memento mori of a dance is a nightmare. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Raw and Untamed, a Paul Taylor Dance Gets a Second Chance
Bringing a dance back to life is detective work. Just what was on Paul Taylor's mind when he was choreographing 'Churchyard,' a work of angelic beauty and distorted horror, more than 50 years ago? Separated into two sections, 'Sacred' and 'Profane,' 'Churchyard' reflects Taylor's unsettling way of weaving together dark and light. Set to medieval-inspired music by Cosmos Savage, the dance becomes increasingly sinister, so much so that by the time 'Profane' rolls around, the dancers' unitards are filled with lumps. The Black Death is coming. Michael Novak, the artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, is determined to get the reconstruction of 'Churchyard' right. Or at least as right as he can make it. Part of the company's season at the Joyce Theater, which begins June 17, 'Churchyard' (1969) will return with another early revival, 'Tablet' (1960), a duet with design by the artist Ellsworth Kelly. Taylor, who died in 2018, had discussed reviving 'Churchyard,' but there was a problem: memory. Bettie de Jong, the statuesque centerpiece of the dance (and later, the company's rehearsal director), insisted that Nicholas Gunn, who joined the Taylor company the year 'Churchyard' was made, needed to be involved. 'Now I know why,' Novak said. 'Nick is kind of the key. It was the first dance he was ever in, and usually I have found, the first dance you go into, you remember it so well because you're so scared. You want to do a good job.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
