Dance:

...There are two events taking place in two different worlds which from time to time intermingle...

...They slouch, they shamble and shuffle between bursts of dithery, frenzied arm twirls...

...It has passion and playfulness and a relentless momentum until the final diagonal crossing formation of the six men...

...One small figure shambles along after a larger male form throughout so doggedly that she bumps unexpectedly into him from behind when he halts suddenly...

...The exact intent of the work remains, for me, somewhat obscure though enjoyable...

...Three Epitaphs'' was given its premiere performance in 1956 and has remained one of the choreographer's signature pieces...

...It is brief but poignantly moving as a portrait of people hopefully pressing on, against the dull weight of their condition...

...The score is the two-piano arrangement of Stravinsky's score, and the movement is stylized to look like the flat, profile figures presented in frieze painting., Presumably this is a homage to the movement style featured in the original Nijinsky ballet to the same music...

...In most cases the retirement of the modern dance choreographer results in a loss of artistic interest...

...Their behavior is both hilarious and pathetic...

...Its five dancers look like animate slag in Robert Rauschenberg's matt black and mirror-dotted form-fitting costumes...

...Technically it is restricting but Taylor has produced a variety of beautiful solos and duets that are some of the most inventive that he has ever presented...

...It is this unstressed connection that make his dances flow so lyrically...

...While Taylor has shown himself delightfully eclectic in his choice of scores, selecting contemporary electronic collages as well as repertory standards, the cadences of the eighteenth century have regularly suggested nobility and balance to him...

...Their presence as Muse-like figures spur the men on to feats of derring-do or mannered politeness more than they engage them as persons...

...Last year's novelty "Le Sacre Du Printemps (The Rehearsal)" remains an intriguing enigma...

...Obscure Taylor, however, is worth a dozen, clear, and less talented others...

...Since Taylor himself retired from active performing six years ago, he has been on a creative curve that has maintained a tremendous upward surge...

...DON McDONAGH...

...The implication is that if the creative individual cannot also present the final work to the public on stage, personally, then the creative spur has been removed...

...All choreographers create dances designed for the talents of their companies, and the presence of six exceptionally strong male dancers, Elie Chaib, Thomas Evert, Daniel Ezralow, Christopher Gillis, David Parsons, and Kenneth Tosti has obviously had much to do with the formation of this tour de force...

...As a delightful exception to this and most other rules that govern modern dance, Taylor has proved that he continues to go his own way...

...The men's behavior is never less than correct toward these objects of inspiration but their interest never spills over into individual commitment toward them...

...Both of the latter works were included during the three-week season at City Center 55th Street Theater, and both received sterling performances...

...This season his new " Arden Court" reflects the sunshine side of his temperament...

...Like "Arden Court" set to the music of William Boyce, "Aureole" and "Airs" draw on an eighteenth century composer, G.F...

...Handel...

...In other hands the same music would shatter into fragments of isolated incidents without the sense of cohesion that Taylor always imparts...

...It is a fine piece but one has the nagging feeling that such praise is like the award of a current prize to make up for a past oversight...

...The dancers continue to rehearse, although from time to time they have assumed the roles of police or gangsters in the other story...

...The chivalrous code of tourney and joust underlies all that they do and it is this concern that drives them, more than personal involvement...

...It is far and away more typical for the artistic director of a modern company to hang onto the stage too long and choreograph works suitable for his or her diminished skills or just go through the motions of dry, sterile exercises for his company...

...Between the opening male formation, full of leaps and turns, there are a series of duets, each of which emphasizes the violent energy of the men and the demure prettiness of the women...

...Dancers rehearse under the sharp eye of a ballet-mistress dressed like a cossack, while concurrently a detective attempts to find a kidnapped child and a jewel thief conspires to commit another crime...

...One of Taylor's great talents lies in his ability to take discrete bits of music and arrange related dance sequences to them that contain enough of a "story" thread to make them comprehensible, without reference to an explicit plot line...

...It is a dance that celebrates sheer physical prowess with a suggestion of courtliness one associates with the behavior of knights errant...

...It is not that Taylor has not been praised for his previous work but the presence of the superior "Aureole" and "Airs" in the season should have tended to dampen overpraise somewhat...

...The three women, Carolyn Adams, Susan McGuire, and Lila York, are more the occasions for male display than they are thoroughly realized characters...

...The earliest repertory piece presented was from the first decade in which Taylor began choreographing...

...A great deal of critical fuss has been made over the new '' Arden Court'' as being one of the watershed dance works of the past thirty years, if not the whole century to date...

...Glints of light reflect from the dark costumes the way that movement spurts forth periodically from the dancers only to subside again into the resigned shuffling that is the work's most characteristic movement...

...They totter along to the rhythms of molasses-like jazz that seems to be extruded sluggishly from the instruments rather than bursting forth from them...

...Dance THE SUNSHINE SIDE PAUL TAYLOR'S CHOREOGRAPHY CHOREOGRAPHER Paul Taylor lives in a creative world of light and shade and one never knows from which side of his prodigious talent his next work will emerge...

...All three works are without overt plot and are cast in suite form...

...Taylor, on the other hand, has freed something within himself by retirement as a dancer...

...The piece is in the line of choreographic development that includes "Aureole" and "Airs" as its two most distinguished predecessors...

...The detective finds himself placed in jail, escapes to find the child, and it, along with all of the underworld and police characters, are dispatched in a hilarious chain reaction of violence...

...Season after season he has presented new work that indicates an intense artistic involvement that is quite unusual among modern dance choreographers...