“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,” author C.S. Lewis once wrote, and the observation rings truer than ever in “Lines of Loss,” where grief intermingles with danger, and the choreographer offers no easy answers as to why.
Silhouetted against Santo Loquasto’s immense, darkly striated background, the eleven dancers process onto the stage as if entering a church. The mood is one of barely contained emotion, rumbling under the polite white unitards, and running like an undercurrent in the music -- by composers as various as Guillaume de Machaut, Christopher Tye, Jac Body, John Cage, Arvo Part and Alfred Snittke.
Each section of the ballet takes its title from the last name of the composer, which leaves a certain implication hanging in the air. In “Tye,” Lisa Viola’s heartfelt contractions and pulls of the back suggested a soul yearning to break free, while Robert Kleinendorst’s twitchy solo in “Body” described a strange loss of self-control.
But not just portraits of grief, Taylor also turns to scenes that grieve us. In “Cage” spiky pairs of men pound the floor rhythmically, and menace two women who have wandered into their clutches – Julie Tice and Michelle Fleet—and in a second section titled “Tye,” a seemingly idyllic community fractures into fisticuffs.
It was an enigmatic ballet that at times seemed to make the audience uneasy – between sections there was often only rapt silence instead of the usual unnecessary applause. By the time a tempestuous Annmaria Mazzini unfurled a trembling and searing solo in the center of the circle of dancers, the sense of high emotion was palpable in the room.
For the Paul Taylor Dance Company this season marks the last installment of a five-year running engagement at San Francisco Performances, and if you’ve been putting off seeing the company, now is the time to go, because the 53-year old troupe isn’t planning to return to SFP until 2009. A prolific choreographer, Taylor’s works range from the exhilarating abstractions to darkly ominous mediations to bright comic fluff, and this opening program, like the other two which the company performs through Sunday, had a taste of each.
The evening’s comic relief came wrapped up in Taylor’s 1962 “Piece Period,” a relatively jolly, but also relatively forgettable bit of slapstick. You know you’re in for a bit of a romp when the curtain goes up on Richard Chen See in parti-colored tights and tunic with a jaunty beret on his head. “Piece Period” which the company hasn’t revived since 1979, sports an oddball menagerie of characters in some kind of absurdist village, dancing to another mix of Vivaldi, Telemann, Haydn, Scarlatti, Beethoven and Francesco Bonporti.
Daffy without being too dimwitted, “Piece Period” flaunted some of Taylor’s most engaging dancers, Viola in a blue bustier flashing sly glints at the audience, Kleinendorst all bluster in candy red waistcoat and powdered wig, and a mincing triumvirate of women in pie crust collars bouncing hip bolsters under their skirts. The cartoons kept coming, and the dancers played them for all they were worth, with Amy Young notable for her ability to make silliness look classy.
The evening closed with one of Taylor’s most satisfying ballets, the 1978 “Airs,” to the music of G.F. Handel. If Taylor’s choreography idiosyncrasies--those familiar circle dances, the peripatetic meanderings into and out of groups, the characteristic curved arms—look tired in other later works, here the patterns and steps hang together organically, with a sweeping logic that still allows the individual dancers to breathe freely. Parisa Khobdeh’s beguiling zest and Young’s gentle sways into spiral shapes stood out, as did Laura Halzack’s serene arms in the dreamy finale.
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