Tag: Laura Halzack

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Paul Taylor Dance at OSL Bach Festival

Throwback to the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing at the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Bach Festival on June 8, 2019.

I was traveling for two weeks, and so could attend only one performance out of three weeks of programming.

The festival marked the start of retirement of a generation of beloved Paul Taylor dancers, including Michael Trusnovec and Laura Halzack, as well as four more expected departures later this year.

Tonight’s show featured Brandenburgs, Rewilding, and Cascade. As usual, the Paul Tayler dancers filled the stage with artistry and energy. If anything, the stage at the Manhattan School of Music seemed barely large enough for the exuberance of Paul Taylor choreographies.

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Cloven Kingdom

Paul Taylor American Modern Dance: Another wondeful night at the Lincoln Center, plus a backstage tour with Michael Novak.

Tonight’s program opened with the 1960s-themed “Changes” featuring dancers all dressed in hippies fashion. Memorable moments included…

Christina Lynch Markham‘s solo to California Earthquake.

The unusual but fascinating movement quality that combined modern dance, 60s dancing, and the “relaxed feel” that came from having a little too much grass. Modern dance is no cake walk, but I suspect the “relaxed look” is even harder to dance… especially while sober and under the Lincoln Center’s stage lighting???

And, of course, the dancing bear by James Samson and Michael Apuzzo. The father-son moment in the dancing bear was wonderful, but I’m too young to get the reference. Why is there a dancing bear? How is the bear connected to the 1960s?

“Continuum” is full of contrasts… Between the uplifting Madelyn Ho in red, Heather McGinley in pink, and the rest of the company fading quickly into grey. Between the graceful goddess-like Laura Halzack and the tormented Lee Duveneck who picked himself up only to fall, drop, crash into the ground over and over again.

In “Cloven Kingdom,” the dancers portrayed the dual roles of being members of the high society while clinging onto the inner animals inside each one of them. It was great to see this choreography in its full glory (with the full set of costumes, stage lightning, and live music) tonight vs. the earlier studio preview.

This choreography had the dance historian in me thinking…

Back in the 1910s, Vernon and Irene Castle brought couple dancing to upper middle class Americans. Elegent and fashionable, the Castles made social dancing such as the Tango, Foxtrot, Hesitation Waltz, Maxixe not only acceptable but respectable by the high society.

However, it’s also during the 1910s, that animal dances such as the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, Crab Walk, Duck Waddle, Kangaroo Hop swept across America in one of the biggest dance craze in US history.

Could “Cloven Kingdom” have any relation to the defining years in American social dance leading up to 1914? (Vernon Castle was killed in WWI.)

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Company B

The Paul Taylor Dance Company accompanied by the Duchess at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on Friday.

With the Duchess performing songs of the Andrews Sisters, the Paul Taylor Dance Company put on “Company B,” a choreography set in the 1940s swing era as the United States emerged from the Great Depression and drawn into World War II.

Comprised of ten parts, each section of “Company B” tells a different story of the nation. Starting with youths jubilantly dancing the lindy hop, jitterbug, and polkas… we were then treated to hit songs of the era (“Tico Tico” and “Rum and Coca-Cola”)… before the storyline moved onto young lovers separated by war (“I Can Dream, Can’t I?”) and the heartbreak of losing a loved one (“There Will Never Be Another You”). As we watched Heather McGinley mourn on stage, we couldn’t help but feel for what the 1940s generation had gone through in a turbulent era.

“Company B – Bei Mir Bist du Schön”
Choreography: Paul Taylor
Dancers: Robert Kleinedorst, James Samson, Parisa Khobdeh, Sean Mahoney, Eran Bugge, Francisco Graciano, Laura Halzack, Michael Apuzzo, Michael Novak, Heather McGinley, George Smallwood, Christina Lynch Markham, Madelyn Ho, Kristin Draucker
Photography: Jason Chuang

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Airs

The Paul Taylor Dance Company performed at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on Friday.

“Airs” is a happy, dynamic, and energetic choreography filled with jumps, lifts, and fluid movements meant to represent the air and water. Paul Taylor paints the stage with his dancers as gusts of wind, eddies in the river, clouds in the air. Everything is smooth and ever changing — like spending a day out in the nature, or like nature itself.

“Airs”
Choreography: Paul Taylor
Dancers: Michael Trusnovec, Robert Kleinendorst, George Smallwood, Michelle Fleet, Eran Bugge, Laura Halzack, Parisa Khobdeh
Photography: Jason Chuang