This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on March 6, 2009.
Dancers from the Paul Taylor Dance Company, from left, Michael Trusnovec, Julie Tice, and Orion Duckstein take part in a performance of “Beloved Renegade” in New York on Nov. 21, 2008. Performances continue through March 15, 2009 at New York’s City Center. Photographer: Wiley Price/Paul Taylor Dance Co. via Bloomberg News
March 6 (Bloomberg) — Illuminated by a narrow shaft of light, a man in white with pale coloring stands in a pure classical pose, as contemplative as a marble statue. A sheer dark scrim rises to reveal the people that have figured in his life, from youth to death, making him the man he is. Accompanied by Francis Poulenc’s “Gloria,” the ensuing events take on a sacred air.
Paul Taylor’s new “Beloved Renegade” was featured last Wednesday at the opening of his company’s three-week season at New York’s City Center. It’s a tribute to Walt Whitman, the American poet whose free-verse “Leaves of Grass” celebrated his feeling of oneness with everything in the world — people, grass, you name it.
The central figure, played with eloquence and restraint by Taylor’s muse, Michael Trusnovec, walks and watches as much as he dances. He observes various aspects of love: young people, whose innocent sensuality is their birthright, reveling in movement that is both tender and forceful, to a mound of dying soldiers, one of whom Trusnovec kisses tenderly on the mouth by way of a farewell blessing. (Whitman tended soldiers in the Civil War and was probably gay or bisexual.)
Old, Familiar Games
Trusnovec also watches the rollicking buoyancy of a quintet of children, still free of the world’s sorrows, at play in old, familiar games. He observes ecstatic adults celebrating love both as a community and as individual couples, as if the two forms of Eros were the same.
He witnesses the seemingly miraculous cure of a physically afflicted woman (Amy Young). Often the full ensemble members, simply dressed by Santo Loquasto in ice-cream colors, make gestures of worship and praise, emphasizing the idea that every aspect of life is holy.
The statuesque Laura Halzack plays Trusnovec’s guide and sometime dancing partner, though an emotional distance between them is scrupulously maintained. She is his guardian angel, eventually leading him to his inevitable death. Just before the curtain falls, the man we saw first poised in noble verticality lies supine and still, as if in his grave, while the woman rotates unwaveringly beside him, one leg extended high and curved, protecting him in life’s last passage.
Taylor came late to Whitman. Cottoning to the poet’s belief in the unity of body and soul — what choreographer wouldn’t? — he didn’t go off and write embarrassing imitative poems. Instead, nearing 80, Taylor has choreographed an homage to Whitman and the poet’s unconventional principles that is a masterwork only an artist of his mature experience could achieve. It needs only to be a little longer to be perfect. Jennifer Tipton’s lighting is already perfect.
Through March 15 at 131 W. 55th St. Information: +1-212- 581-1212; http://www.nycitycenter.org.
© 2009 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.