Paul Taylor Dance Company visits Philly with a world premiere, a whodunit, and Bach’s beauty
The company will be bringing two Taylor classics, a world premiere by Omar Román De Jesús, and an eye toward the future.
“It’s one thing to hear Bach,” said Michael Novak, artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. “It’s another thing to see it.”
That’s why he chose Taylor’s 1988 work Brandenburgs as one of the three pieces the company will be performing this weekend at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts as part of Penn Live Arts.
Novak called the Brandenburg Concertos “an incredibly athletic, beautiful virtuosic gem within our cannon” that illustrates Bach’s “complexity and sensitivity in extraordinary ways.”
It also hasn’t been seen in Philadelphia since 1997.
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The Paul Taylor Dance Company has been coming to Philadelphia since 1967and is one of the city’s most frequent visiting companies. This weekend’s performance will be its 19th visit.
This visit will also include a world premiere, Omar Román De Jesús’ If You Could Swallow the Sun, set to music by Jessie Scheinen and with costumes by Santo Loquasto, one of Taylor’s most frequent collaborators.
De Jesús “has an uncanny ability to create very surreal and beautiful and haunting worlds on stage,” Novak said. “And I was very interested in seeing how that how that could marry with the personality and the expression of the Taylor company.”
The final piece on the program is Taylor’s 1980 work Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal), set to a rehearsal version of the Stravinsky score, arranged for two pianos.
The original Le Sacre du Printemps was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinksy in 1913.
“Paul takes the two-dimensionality of Nijinsky’s vocabulary from that original ballet,” Novak said, “and he puts it in an environment where there’s two stories happening simultaneously: the story of a rehearsal director and her company who are rehearsing and that’s married with this whodunit detective story.”
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Novak attended University of the Arts in 2001 and 2002, before moving over to the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet, in Narberth. To make ends meet, he was a server at Marathon on the Square.
Novak has been the artistic director for nearly five years, since Taylor’s death at 88. He is working on his inventory of Taylor’s 147 works, some of which haven’t been seen in decades, and is also commissioning new work, such as the De Jesús piece. Last year, he hired the company’s first resident choreographer, former New York City Ballet principal dancer Lauren Lovette, creating much buzz in the dance world.
“I’m very much interested in building long-term sustainable relationships with choreographers and designers, just like Paul had with Robert Rauschenberg and Alex Katz … We are galvanized … we’re continuing to do what we’ve always done, which is push the art form forward,” he said.
Next season at the Annenberg
Penn Live Arts’ 2023-24 season of dance performances will feature:
Cuban contemporary troupe Malpaso Dance Company, which opens the season in October.
Rennie Harris as an artist-in-residence at the Annenberg. His company, Puremovement, will present a 30th anniversary retrospective of his work.
Dorrance Dance’s return with The Nutcracker. Michelle Dorrance is a MacArthur fellow and considered to be one of the finest tap dancers and choreographers working today.
Performances by Annenberg regular visitors Doug Varone and Dancers, BODYTRAFFIC, Ballets Jazz Montréal, MOMIX, and the Mark Morris Dance Group.
Paul Taylor Dance Company. April 21-22. 8 p.m., Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. Zellerbach Theatre at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut St. $59-$67. 215-898-3900 or pennlivearts.org.