Opus Number: 45 Music: Music Collage by John Herbert McDowell (commissioned score) Costumes: John Rawlings Lighting: Jennifer Tipton Date First Performed: October 8, 1968 Notes: "The piece travels a light, easy journey, with the two elements of the piece — dance and music — each finally coming to a rest like a once-fresh box of…
read moreOpus Number: 84 Music: P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) Set and Costumes: Alex Katz Lighting: Jennifer Tipton Date First Performed: April 1, 1986 Notes: "It isn't your everyday choreographer who will unabashedly turn to self-parody but Paul Taylor plunges straight into such waters in his zany and newest work, Ab Ovo Usque ad Mala... Parody works…
read moreOpus Number: 43 Music: Carlos Surinach (commissioned score) Costumes: Julian Tomchin Date First Performed: August 12, 1967 Notes: " The new version, changed in most of its choreography and strengthened in its characteriza tion, is tongue‐in‐cheek from the start. It is irreverent toward sex and religion on its own terms. But it seems to work…
read moreOpus Number: 44 Music: Franz Josef Haydn Costumes: George Tacet Lighting: Jennifer Tipton Date First Performed: August 12, 1967 Notes: "Brief and yet beautifully shaped, its use of Haydn's music provided another demonstration of Mr. Taylor's sensibility and sensitivity for pre-romantic music… the music lends itself to counterphased choreography of continual interest and beauty." –…
read moreOpus Number: 42 Music: Ludwig van Beethoven Set and Costumes: Alex Katz Lighting: Jennifer Tipton Date First Performed: July 4, 1966 Notes: "Orbs is not just a planetary look at mankind, it’s a history of dance seen through the wildly imaginative eyes of Mr. Taylor. The references to Graham, shown with a Taylor twist, are…
read moreOpus Number: 39 Music: Charles Ives (later, commissioned score by John Herbert McDowell) Costumes: John Rawlings Lighting: Tom Skelton Date First Performed: March 31, 1965 Notes: “If the United States had a proper arts policy, Paul Taylor would be declared a national treasure…Sea naughtily satiric view of Lady Liberty and the other symbols of America…
read moreOpus Number: 41 Music: Evelyn Lohoeffer de Boeck (commissioned score) Costumes: Alex Katz Lighting: William Ritman Date First Performed: March 31, 1965 Notes: "Post Meridian has a related sinister air; four of its female dancers sport handsomely colored Katz costumes with one scarlet, gloved sleeve and occasionally suggest conjoined twins in Taylor’s configurations, all part…
read moreOpus Number: 40 Music: Arcangelo Corelli Costumes: Rouben Ter-Arutunian Lighting: William Ritman Date First Performed: March 31, 1965 Notes: "In it, the movement idiom, though basically rooted in modern dance technique, was clothed with the serenity, the cool elegance of classical court dances." – Walter Terry, New York Herald Tribune
read moreOpus Number: 38 Music: Franz Josef Haydn Costumes: George Tacet Lighting: Thomas Skelton Date First Performed: August 18, 1964 Notes: In a 1992 New York Times review by Jack Anderson, he wrote that DUET, "begins with the woman on the floor and the man bending over her; later, a comparable position is shown, this time…
read moreOpus Number: 37 Music: Gunther Schuller Set and Costumes: Alex Katz Date First Performed: June 20, 1964 Notes: "Some of the effects achieved by the eight dancers remind one of the pattern discovered in a kaleidoscope. But here, human bodies make group designs or move in solitude, leap skyward with breath-taking resiliency or sink to…
read more
