Marshall Miles Interviews Jada Perlman, Paul Taylor Dance Company at Mahaiwe Theatre, Sat Oct 12 at 8PM

Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center with three performances over Columbus Day Weekend. The celebrated modern dance company continues the legacy of its late founder Paul Taylor under the new leadership of Artistic Director Michael Novak.

Saturday night will consist of three pieces:

Esplanade (1975)
In 1975 Paul Taylor, inspired by the sight of a girl running to catch a bus, created a masterwork based on pedestrian movement. If contemporaries Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg could use ordinary “found objects” like Coke bottles and American flags in their art, Taylor would use such “found movements” as standing, walking, running, sliding and falling.

Brief Encounters (2009)
A dance about people more concerned with momentary connections than ongoing relationships. Men and women converge at a secret trysting place in the dead of night – not for romance, but to satisfy their pure animal instincts.

Piazzolla Caldera (1997)
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.

Sponsored by CBT and Kimball Farms