The Paul Taylor Dance Company presents "Diggity," "Cloven Kingdom," and "Syzygy" at PS21
Company:
The Paul Taylor Dance Company
Long have the dancers of the Paul Taylor Dance Company captivated the world with their athleticism, emotion, and fearlessness. The company is returning to PS21 with a program of Paul Taylor‘s groundbreaking earlier work, Diggity (1978), Cloven Kingdom (1976), and Syzygy (1987). In 2021, the company was in residency at PS21 for three weeks, recreating Kurt Jooss’ 1932 anti-war masterpiece, The Green Table.
Program July 6–7
Diggity (1978)
Music: Donald York (commissioned score)
Set and Costumes: Alex Katz
Lighting: Mark Litvin
Date First Performed: November 3, 1978
“A mysteriously joyous… wonderful, crazy excursion into the unknown. Taylor has bestrewn the stage with wonderful Alex Katz profiles of dogs – mean, handsome, arrogant, underprivileged – that provide an obstacle course for Taylor’s dancers…who swing their way through the obliquely simple choreography with an almost contemptuous élan.” – Clive Barnes, New York Post
Cloven Kingdom (1976)
Music: Arcangelo Corelli, Henry Cowell, and Malloy Miller
Costumes: Women’s Costumes by Scott Barrie, Headpieces by John Rawlings
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Date First Performed: June 9, 1976
“Man is a social animal,” said Spinoza. Just below the surface of humans’ civilized veneer lurks an animal nature that cannot be ignored. The scene is a cotillion ball where members of high society are dressed in formal attire – the gentlemen in tailcoats and the ladies wearing gowns and mirrored headpieces. A baroque score vies for dominance with urgent, percussive 20th-Century music, reflecting the struggle between our gentler and more savage natures. As primitive impulses emerge…they prance and stalk on all fours, and their totemic friezes suggest the prehistoric ancestors from whom we have descended. Although the dance ends on a triumphant note with social structures intact, it has become clear that we are not separate from animals, we are animals. A sharp comedy of manners [about] the conflicting natures within people and, more specifically, the darker side that surfaces under the veneer of gentility. – Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times
Syzygy (1987)
Music: Donald York (commissioned score)
Costumes: Santo Loquasto
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Date First Performed: April 21, 1987
"Full of utterly brilliant and seemingly disconnected shards of choreography. A full-throttle exercise in physicality, loose-limbed and speedy… It simply continues to increase its velocity, its sense of elfin delight, as the dance goes by. Leaves the audience gasping for more." – Barry Johnson, The Oregonian
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