AT 80, has Paul Taylor done it all? His birthday gala Tuesday night featured three dances, including two New York premieres, that had a heavy hint of déjà vu.
One new work, “Brief Encounter,” is exactly what the title puns: the company dancing in its skivvies. Given these bodies, this is worth the ticket price.
“Brief Encounter” is about sex, but it’s direct and oblique at the same time, like a tea party at a sex club. The couplings seem either angry or frustrated, including a girl who prefers a mirror to a partner, and a guy who cups his hand over his crotch when another girl notices him.
There’s also a weirdly chaste example of bisexual partner swapping. The encounters feel juvenile; it’s no accident that Taylor used an orchestrated recording of Debussy’s “Children’s Corner.”
“Brief Encounters” is interesting, but Taylor also made an even better Debussy piece, “Arabesque,” a decade ago. It was just as sexy, but mature.
Kudos, though, to Santo Loquasto, who designed the itsy-bitsy black briefs and bras, and also a beautiful backdrop suggesting a dim underground corridor.
The other new work is “Also Playing,” Taylor’s salute to vaudeville. To recorded chestnuts by Donizetti, we see a whole variety show: the Gypsy dance, the Apache dance, a tap-dancing horse, a striptease and a stagehand who finally gets his turn to perform. Taylor’s also done several vaudeville sketches, but as much as he likes making them, a good Bugs Bunny cartoon has more laughs.
The evening opened with an older work, 1988’s “Brandenburgs.” Like the Bach concertos to which they’re set, the dances are neatly patterned and artfully constructed. Unlike the Bach, they’re forgettable, even with some virtuoso turns in the finale and a solo for Michael Trusnovec that makes him look like a marble statue slowly set into motion.
Even so, never assume that Taylor’s burned out: He’ll just make a masterpiece to prove you wrong. But maybe that’s the problem with a half-century of choreographing. Taylor’s harshest competition is himself.