Name: Paul Taylor Dance Company: "Mercuric Tidings," "A Field of Grass," & "Piazzolla Caldera."
Start: 2023-06-23T00:00:00+00:00
End: 2023-06-24T01:30:00+00:00
Location: PS21 Open-Air Pavilion Theater

Description

Long have the dancers of Paul Taylor Dance Company captivated the world with their athleticism, emotion, and fearlessness. A favorite staple of PS21's season, the company is returning to PS21 with a program of Paul Taylor‘s groundbreaking work, Mercuric Tidings (1982), A Field of Grass (1993), and Piazzolla Caldera (1997).

In 2021, the company was in residency at PS21 for three weeks, recreating Kurt Jooss’ 1932 anti-war masterpiece, The Green Table, and in 2022, the company returned to PS21, performing Airs, Cloven Kingdom, and Syzygy.

Piazzolla Caldera

Neruda wrote of poetry that mirrors “the flawed confusion of human beings,” poetry “worn away as if by acid by the labor of hands, impregnated with sweat and smoke, smelling of lilies and of urine, splashed by the variety of what we do, legally or illegally… as impure as old clothes, as a body, with its foodstains and its shame, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, wakefulness, prophecies, declarations of love and hate, stupidities, shocks, idylls….” He might have been describing the predatory dance that originated in the brothels of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th Century: tango. The music of tango – with Spanish, Italian, Indian, African and Jewish influences – was taken to new heights by Astor Piazzolla. Without a single authentic tango step, Paul Taylor captures the essence of tango culture. In a dimly lit dive, working class men and women confront each other in sizzling sexual duets and trios: men with women, men with men and women with women. Two men too drunk for conquests perform a loopy dance as lamplights sway dizzily overhead. A woman who has searched desperately for a partner but failed to find one, collapses – as if mortally wounded by a night without passion.

“Stunning. Taylor looks at the attitudes implicit of the tango – as sexual game, as social identity – and reshapes them. Seethes and flares with sexuality and develops a huge erotic charge. One of Taylor’s most astonishing (even for him) creations.” – Clement Crisp, Financial Times of London

Mercuric Tidings

“Danced for the sheer joy of it, the controlled expenditure of animal energy, poetry expressed as a time and motion of study, young people cavorting with the kinetic propensities of young godlets.” – Clive Barnes, New York Post

A Field of Grass

“A master of mixing dark and light, Paul Taylor outdid himself in A Field of Grass, a stunningly succinct recreation of the apocalyptic 1960’s and the decade’s appetite for love, death and drugs.” – Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

Date & Time

Jun 22 - 23, 2023

Venue Details

PS21 Open-Air Pavilion Theater

2980 New York 66
Chatham, New York 12037

PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century

Established in Chatham, NY in 2006, PS21 supports innovative performing artists and creators and introduces their work to a broader audience, while also providing the surrounding region with opportunities for arts engagement regardless of economic status, cultural background, and age.

Five acres of PS21's 100+ acres are developed; the rest are meadows and woodlands. Situated near the theater are the Dance Barn, a rehearsal and performance venue, and two artists’ residences accommodating sixteen individuals. The PS21 property is also host to the Chatham Farm Animal Rescue. PS21's new theater and rural campus are important resources for both visiting artists and the community, optimized for the public's enjoyment and to encourage citizen expression and participation.

The 350-seat theater is a state-of-the-art, green facility offering resident makers and performers the tools and flexibility for successful innovation and collaboration in the development of sophisticated multi-media work. Few other US facilities are able to provide this level of technical support. PS21 operates year-round, supporting performances by and residencies for dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, actors and creators. The summer season is PS21's public highlight, during which a full calendar of performances is augmented with a myriad of events and workshops, many of which are free of charge and involve community collaboration with the gifted artists in residence.

PHOTOGRAPHY
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