Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Sparkling Gala Performance: Two World Premieres and a Classic

The Paul Taylor Dance Company has returned to the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for its annual fall season. Before last week’s gala performance began, artistic director Michael Novak spoke passionately about the importance of making and experiencing art during trying times and about the Company’s unwavering commitment to diversity. He closed his remarks by saying that he hoped the Company could be an example of “what modern dance can be and where modern dance needs to go.”

The gala performance opened with the world premiere of resident choreographer Lauren Lovette’s Chaconne in Winter, dedicated to vice chair of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation Board of Directors and founder of the Company’s Dancemaker Fund, Stephen Kroll Reidy.

The piece begins with three musicians (Charles Yang, Nicolas Kendall and Ranaan Meyer of the Grammy Award-winning Time for Three) clothed in sparkling black, standing on platforms against a black backdrop. As the musicians play Johann Sebastian Bach and Justin Vernon, two dancers (Madelyn Ho and John Harnage) blow onto the stage in exquisite sparkling white costumes designed by Mark Eric. They swirl around each other, curling and dipping in an uncanny imitation of snowflakes. The duet is light and lovely, and Lovette’s background as a dancer with the New York City Ballet is evident—the choreography is abstract and precise, with musicality paramount. For most of the piece, the dancers have an otherworldly quality. Near the end, though, they pause and really look at each other and in this stillness, they are poignantly human. After this brief connection, they blow off again, and it is clear that we have witnessed something ephemeral, that they might never meet again.

The next piece on the program was the one-night-only world premiere of guest artist Robert Battle’s Dedicated to You, a tribute to Battle’s mentor and teacher at the Juilliard School, Carolyn Adams. Adams, a former Company dancer and renowned dance educator, is now the Taylor School’s director of education. Battle danced with Parsons Dance before starting his own company, Battleworks Dance Company, and then became the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 2011 to 2023. This is his first work for the Company, though it was recently announced that he will become the Company’s second Resident Choreographer.

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Dedicated to You is also set to music by Bach, this time played live by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL). The solo, danced by the outstanding Jada Pearman in a blue satin dress, begins at center stage. In the first section, Pearman appears timid and purposefully awkward. She moves through what Taylor students will recognize as class exercises, repeatedly pausing to check her form and fix herself. Then the blue lights turn green, and the sultry voices of Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine come through the speakers. Pearman’s movements become jazzier and more confident. In the third section, Bach returns, and the choreography is energetic and fluid, Pearman smiling and sure-footed. The same Taylor-inspired moves are repeated throughout—the telltale V arms, the spiraling—but they slowly become Battle’s and then become Pearman’s.

The program closed with a classic: Promethean Fire (2002), choreographed by Company founder Paul Taylor (1930-2018). After the quiet intimacy of a duet and a solo, the stage seemed to burst open with sixteen dancers. Another Bach masterpiece, Toccata & Fugue in D minor, gushes out of the orchestra pit as the ensemble stands tall in Santo Loquasto’s tight black costumes. The flawless unison and seamless group formations show a master at work. Dancers weave in and out, running in circles swiftly as the blur of a centrifuge. They leap and catch each other and slide to the ground. At first, the ensemble is an ensemble; then two dancers (Devon Louis and Ho) rise out of a heap as the central duet, and their performance is phenomenal. Louis appears godly, and Ho is a delicate blaze. When the other dancers flood back, the dance escalates, matching Bach’s mythic music in its relentless momentum.

What a way to end a program. And what a way to show—as Novak hoped—what dance can be and do and where it could go from here.

Paul Taylor Dance Company will be at Lincoln Center through November 24. Chaconne in Winter will be performed again on 11/14 at 7:00 p.m. Promethean Fire will be performed again on 11/17 at 3:00 p.m. and 11/20 at 7:00 p.m. The Company’s fall season also includes ten Taylor classics, two other works by Lovette, two works by Jody Sperling and returning audience favorites by Ulysses Dove and Larry Keigwin.