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Performing Arts Series: Paul Taylor performs new co-commission ‘Brief Encounters’Print OptionsMore InformationRelated Information |
Performing Arts Series: Paul Taylor performs new co-commission ‘Brief Encounters’
Johnson County Community College
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At age 79, Taylor is not through yet.
Taylor’s newest dance, Brief Encounters, a co-commission of the Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College, will have its second-ever performance at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Nov. 13-14, in Yardley Hall of the Carlsen Center. The new dance has its world premiere the week before at Syracuse University, N.Y., Taylor’s alma mater. A company member will give a pre-performance talk at 7 p.m.
Two entirely different programs will be performed on Friday and Saturday, except for Brief Encounters, which appears on the programs both evenings.
Friday’s program is Brief Encounters, Scudorama and Offenbach Overtures, and Saturday’s program is Brief Encounters, Beloved Renegade and Changes.
Brief Encounters features the music of Debussy’s Children’s Corner, costumes by Santo Loquasto and lighting by James Ingalls.
The legendary Scudorama (1963), “a dance of death leavened with light touches,” was one of Taylor’s early triumphs. With a commissioned score by Clarence Jackson, Scudorama was a mainstay of the repertoire for a decade; it now makes a much-anticipated return to the stage.
Offenbach Overtures (1995), set to music by the “King of the CanCan,” is a comic take on things French.
First performed in 2008, Beloved Renegade is a spiritual piece inspired by the life and writings of Walt Whitman set to Francis Poulenc’s stirring choral masterpiece, Gloria.
Changes (2008), a high-spirited dance set to songs sung by The Mamas and The Papas, revisits the turbulent 1960s and the growing radicalization of young people as they defied authority and embraced liberation movements.
Choreography for both dances is by Taylor, and longtime collaborators Santo Loquasto created the set and costumes and Jennifer Tipton the lighting. The three artists, referred to as “the dream team,” completed finishing touches on De Sueños que se Repiten in two days of open rehearsals at Yardley Hall for its world premiere at the Carlsen Center on Nov. 2-3, 2007.
Few artists of our time have had the profound impact on their art form that Taylor has had on dance over the past six decades, and the Performing Arts Series at JCCC is proud to have supported Taylor and his dance company through the years, commissioning or co-commissioning four previous dances: Black Tuesday (2001), Dante Variations (2004), Banquet of Vultures (2006) and De Sueños que se Repiten (2007). In turn, the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation named Charles Rogers, PAS at JCCC, to the Exemplary Presenters’ Coalition because of the Series’ support and commissions of Taylor’s works.
Taylor first presented his choreography with five other dancers and himself on May 30, 1954, in Manhattan. His two dance companies (Taylor 2 was created in 1993) travel the globe, bringing his ever-increasing repertoire to theaters and venues of every size and description in cultural capitals, college campuses and rural communities.
Taylor’s choreography, once deemed experimental and avant-garde, quickly became the gold standard of modern dance. And Taylor bridged, as no other choreographer, the once-distant camps of ballet and modern dance by allowing internationally acclaimed ballet companies to acquire the works he creates for his own celebrated troupe.
He has been showered with every prestigious award the United States and France can bestow on an artist.
Tickets for the Paul Taylor Dance Company are $35 and $25, available by calling the Performing Arts Series box office at 913-469-4445 or online at www.jccc.edu/TheSeries.
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