DANCE VIEW; PAUL TAYLOR

USES BACH TO EVOKE

PRIMITIVE RITES
By ANNA KISSELGOFF APRIL 20, 1986

About the Archive

This is a digitized version of an article from The Timesʼs print

archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve
these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter,
edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors

or other problems. Please send reports of such problems to
archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35

Pagina 1 di 7
 April 20, 1986, Page 002008 The New York Times Archives

Choreographers who ask us to absorb their dances on many levels

at once take the risk that we will not be able to understand their
work completely. This is very different from choreographers who
operate on a very private or hermetic plane - as do so many poets -
and who cannot possibly expect the public to ascertain the exact
meaning of their thoughts.

At a time when art used standard classical allusions, metaphors and

symbols were easier to grasp. Allegories, for instance, abounded in
theatrical dance through the beginning of the 19th century. Since
the symbols were familiar, the coded messages in the choreography

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35

Pagina 2 di 7
 were decipherable. This remained true, in various forms, through
the rest of 19th-century ballet. The images of the Romantic era
soon became formulas. By the time Marius Petipa had reached his
zenith at the end of the 19th century, the narrative images of his
ballets had become pretexts for formal structures in choreography.
Meaning was the least of the spectator's worries.

But when the 20th century came along to shatter both form and
content in the arts, meaning became more difficult. Modern dance
in particular proved less than accessible to its initial audiences in the
1920's and 30's because the forms on view were so new. The
content may not have been treated by dance previously but when
the viewer ferreted it out, it was not strikingly revolutionary. The
manner of expression was.

This power of expressiveness through form comes to mind again in

Paul Taylor's majestic new work, ''A Musical Offering.'' The
choreography clearly suggests that its form will generate meaning.
Yet that meaning remains elusive because the form gives us so
much to see and absorb.

There are some who already say that Mr. Taylor's premiere should
be regarded as movement for movement's sake. It is actually so rich
and sophisticated in its formal structures and composition that
these elements make up the point of his ''Musical Offering,''
according to this reasoning. Moreover, since Mr. Taylor has chosen
Bach's celebrated architectonic composition of the same name, the
interest lies in how he has matched Bach's complex structures with
his own and in how Mr. Taylor's formal invention stands on its own
ground. For many, this has been sufficient.

Yet the dancers here wear costumes by Gene Moore that suggest

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35

Pagina 3 di 7
 loincloths with the women also in matching tight caps and nude-
looking leotards while the men are bare chested. Mr. Moore's black-
on-black backcloth with island-like spots acquires increasing
dramatic connotation through Jennifer Tipton's lighting - which also
pours down in a molten golden glow upon the dancers at certain
moments.

The atmosphere draws us into one of those dawn-of-civilization

climes in which eternal truths are basically stated. In fact, Mr.
Taylor's springboard was not just Bach's music but also certain
carvings and statues from New Guinea. There is a tribal aura to the
community that we see onstage. And while Mr. Taylor's
choreography has sufficient beauty to be considered on its own
(especially the polyphonic ensembles that dissolve and reform into
changing patterns), the pervasive mood of his ''Musical Offering''
invites us to look at it on more than one level.

Complexity and simplicity: Mr. Taylor presents these two facets

together. The problem of perception is compounded by his ability to
go against our expectations. Here, one should recall that in
''Esplanade,'' an earlier work set to Bach, he offered imagery that
contrasted startlingly with the kind of dancing we usually associate
with Bach.

The luxuriant Baroque civilization of the Prussian court that was

responsible for a score such as ''A Musical Offering'' (Bach was
commissioned here by Frederick the Great) must now again be
banished when we see the source of Mr. Taylor's inspiration, the so-
called ''primitive art'' of another culture. Nonetheless the power of
expression of this art, with its underlying religious impulses, is what
clearly attracted Mr. Taylor.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35

Pagina 4 di 7
 In ''Esplanade,'' Mr. Taylor amazed us when he chose Bach's Double
Violin Concerto along with another Bach composition to set off
pedestrian movement. The dancers walked, skipped, ran, jogged,
crawled or stood. True, this everyday movement was organized into
a dance rhythm. But it certainly seemed light years away from
Bach's time and the assumption that a formal language in music
required a formal dance vocabulary.

It is interesting that Mr. Taylor has turned to some of the same Bach
music as George Balanchine. Balanchine composed very few ballets
to Bach. He created only one full ballet to the composer's music -
the 1941 ''Concerto Barocco'' to the Double Violin Concerto. A piece
d'occasion for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, titled after its music -
''Variations on Two Treatments of 'Von Himmel Hoch' by J. S. Bach,''
- was essentially a choral tableau. Balanchine's 1959 Webern ballet,
''Episodes,'' has a ''Ricercata'' section, which consists of part of
Webern's orchestration of Bach's ''Musical Offering.'' In both these
ballets, Balanchine has approached Bach through the intermediary
of a modern composer who has offered his own arrangement of
Bach.

Yet in each case, Balanchine has equated music with dance. He has
not overlaid the music with a scenario. Mr. Taylor has also used
Webern's orchestration of ''A Musical Offering'' (the program credits
Webern/Beyer). But if Balanchine chose to match pure music at the
apex of its classical form with pure dance rooted in its most classical
form, Mr. Taylor chooses an unexpectedly daring turn. Only a
choreographer of his musicality could offer anti-classical images to
go with such classical music.

A ''Musical Offering'' that looks like ''A Rite of Spring'' then, takes
some doing. Mr. Taylor succeeds in his customary ambiguous way,

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35

Pagina 5 di 7
 largely because his formal structures are so strong. They are
classical in the broadest sense. And in the largest sense of all, he
has possibly agreed with those who see a religious subtext to
Bach's score and has related it to the sacred powers of the figurines
from New Guinea whose shapes are echoed among his dancers.
The ''offering'' in Bach's title is sometimes equated with oblation.

The musical theme at the start is embodied by Kate Johnson in a

solo that basically compresses all the movement motifs that will be
developed later. Eyes cast down, arms flattened out in a ''W'' shape,
she tilts from side to side or swings her arms out in leaps around the
stage. Miss Johnson continues to dance until six soloists gradually
enter as counterparts to each musical ''voice'' and she rocks with
her palms out and crossed overhead.

David Parsons's solo is marked by ultra-rapid swiveling turns until

he comes to an abrupt stop opposite Cathy McCann. The couples in
a now larger ensemble echo this image of a pair until Miss McCann
dances a brief quiet solo and then joins Karla Wolfangle and Mr.
Parsons -both now statues who come to life. The most remarkable
solo, exceptionally danced by Kenneth Tosti, is a constrasting study
in breast-beating, staggering ecstasy. Later Miss Wolfangle is an
idol lifted aloft, James Karr dives to the floor, Linda Kent has a
rhythmically complex dance with feet shooting out to the sides, and
Christopher Gillis's acrobatic solo involves headstands and leads
into a duet in which Miss Johnson, absent since the beginning, is
tenderly brought back into the fold.

Since the dancers cross their arms on their chests in a symbolic

death pose, this musical offering is very possibly a funereal dance:
an oblation can signify a sacrifical offering. Mr. Taylor throws out
tantalizing connections.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35

Pagina 6 di 7
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/arts/dance-view-paul-taylor-uses-bach-to-evoke-primitive-rites.html 24/04/19, 10B35
Pagina 7 di 7