Paul Taylor (choreographer)

This article is about the choreographer. For other persons of the same name, see Paul Taylor (disambiguation).
Paul Taylor

Taylor in 1960, photo by Carl Van Vechten
Born July 29, 1930 (1930-07-29) (age 85)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Education Juilliard School (B.S. 1953)
Occupation choreographer
Years active 1954–present

Paul Taylor (born July 29, 1930) is an American choreographer. He is among the last living members of the third generation of America’s modern dance artists.[1]

Early life and education

Taylor was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he grew up in and around Washington, DC. He was a swimmer and student of painting at Syracuse University in the late 1940s. Upon discovering dance through books at the school library, he transferred to Juilliard,[2] where he earned a B.S. degree in dance in 1953[3] under director Martha Hill.

Career

In 1954 he assembled a small company of dancers and began making his own works. A commanding performer despite his late start, he joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1955 for the first of seven seasons as soloist while continuing to choreograph on his own small troupe. In 1959 he was invited by Balanchine to be a guest artist with New York City Ballet.

Taylor's early choreographic projects have been noted as distinctly different from the modern, physical works he would come to be known for, and have even invited comparison to the conceptual performances of the Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s.[4] For Duet (1952), a completely motionless work that has since been lauded as the "choreographic 4'33"", Martha Graham called him a "naughty boy".[5] Though with his landmark work Aureole (1962), he departed from such an avant garde aesthetic, the performance was still intended to provoke dance critics, as he cheekily set his modern movements not to contemporary music but to a baroque score.[4] A choreographer as concerned with subject matter as he is with form, many of Taylor's pieces and movements are pointedly about something.[4] Some movements are related for his love of insects and the way they move. Other movements are influenced by his love of swimming.[2]

Taylor has collaborated with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Alex Katz, Tharon Musser, Thomas Skelton, Gene Moore, John Rawlings, William Ivey Long, Jennifer Tipton, Santo Loquasto and Matthew Diamond. His career and creative process has been much discussed, as he is the subject of the documentary, Dancemaker, and author of the autobiography Private Domain and Wall Street Journal essay Why I Make Dances.

Recognition

Taylor was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1992 and received an Emmy Award for Speaking in Tongues, produced by WNET/New York the previous year. In 1993 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. He received the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1995 and was named one of 50 prominent Americans honored in recognition of their outstanding achievement by the Library of Congress’s Office of Scholarly Programs. He is the recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from California Institute of the Arts, Connecticut College, Duke University, The Juilliard School, Skidmore College, the State University of New York at Purchase, Syracuse University and Adelphi University. Awards for lifetime achievement include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship – often called the “genius award” – and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award. Other awards include the New York State Governor's Arts Award and the New York City Mayor's Award of Honor for Art and Culture. In 1989 Taylor was elected one of ten honorary American members of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Having been elected to knighthood by the French government as Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1969 and elevated to Officier in 1984 and Commandeur in 1990, Taylor was awarded France’s highest honor, the Légion d’Honneur, for exceptional contributions to French culture, in 2000.

Private Domain, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf and re-released by North Point Press and later by the University of Pittsburgh Press, was nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as the most distinguished biography of 1987. Dancemaker, Matthew Diamond’s award-winning, Oscar-nominated feature-length film about Taylor, was hailed by Time as "perhaps the best dance documentary ever."[6]

Paul Taylor Dance Company

The choreographer’s works, now totaling 136, are performed by the world-renowned, 16-member Paul Taylor Dance Company, the chamber-sized Taylor 2, and ballet companies throughout the world.

Of his works 50 are documented in Labanotation. In each completed score there is a section "Introductory Material," which includes topics such as: Casts, Stylistic Notes, as well as other Production information.

A 2015 documentary titled Paul Taylor: Creative Domain showcased his creative process. It was described as "a fly-on-the-wall depiction of the 2010 creation of Three Dubious Memories, his 133rd modern-dance piece for the eponymous company that he founded 61 years ago."[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. "Modern Dance - Later Dancers", Retrieved 28 February 2016.
  2. 1 2 Taylor, Paul (1988). Private Domain. San Francisco: North Print Pages.
  3. ↑ "Current and New Donors Offer Generous Support". Juilliard Journal. Juilliard School. April 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 Roy, Sanjoy. "Step-by-step guide to dance:Paul Taylor", The Guardian, Retrieved 28 February 2016.
  5. ↑ University of Washington Chamber Dance Repertoire. " Paul Taylor / Choreographer", Retrieved 28 February 2016.
  6. ↑ Dance Maker. Matthew Diamond. Docu Rama, 1999. Video
  7. ↑ "Paul Taylor: Creative Domain: Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. 12 September 2015. Retrieved 29 December 2015.

External links

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