The invisible processes behind dance performances?

There is many a step from an idea for a piece of choreography to a performance of a dance. And to paraphrase Paul Taylor, one cannot simply wait for inspiration to strike when your livelihood, or the business of a company's life is on a clock. And maybe this need for self-discipline to simply get-on-with-it generates its own kind of creativity. If I believed that the value of each day was to match the exhilaration and excitement of a performance, then I would probably be pretty disappointed with my life. So today I am writing about what it means to me when I am able to lose myself focusing on tasks that are the invisible engineering on which future days, or even just moments, of excitement are hopefully built. 

Setting Paul Taylor's "Promethean Fire" for the Wiener Staatsballett. Photo: Ashley Taylor

It is May 2026, and last year at this time, I was focused on how to join the ranks of free lance dance teachers in New York City! I had access to beautiful new dance studios at the expanded Paul Taylor studios in midtown Manhattan where I have my desk job as licensing director for Paul Taylor's works, one floor above. But I have not spent years building a following and a reputation as a dance teacher in this city that would draw the barest number of students.

I have no illusions that my career teaching and setting dances all over the globe has afforded me some kind of status that might attract NYC dancers looking to enhance their self-directed training, or that word-of-mouth is enough to attract dance students to my classes. This is, after all, one of the largest metropolitan centers in the world of open classes in almost any discipline you might like to try! Hey, I took acrobatic tumbling classes down by Cooper Union on weekday evenings for Adult beginners, for three years when I first moved to NYC in the early nineties. I was in my early thirties. 

Mid-dive-roll (not photoshopped) over Caryn Heilman. Photo: Lois Greenfield

As I have mentioned before, I started this blog to try and promote my classes and the new location of Taylor Dance West for the newly branded Taylor Center for Dance Education. And I was not naive to the fact that building both a readership and a following for my dance classes was going to be a slow process. So, I think of this process as the "doldrums" of creating a future. I still seem to be stuck without much wind in my sails (bad "sales" pun) for the time being. But this has not stopped me from pursuing other projects while finding a new perspective for which to sustain my writing here, and a few people did come and try my classes! And I am fortunate that a free lance teaching career is not really my goal, since I would have long ago become homeless if I was relying on teaching classes for my rent! LOL. I am truly respectful of those teachers here in NYC that can sustain themselves.

There is SO much that needs to (and can) be done to create (and sustain) a dance and its future legacy. Not all aspects of the creation tend to be done in advance, but ensuring the possibility of a legacy for future generations does require taking the time to construct a "scaffold" of documentation and history. There is notation, music scores, visual and audio recordings, production notes, concept sheets, program copy, interviews from all sides of the creation. All of these documents can assist in the contextualization of a dance, how it is applicable beyond its time, how it offers future generations a foundational lesson, or how it can just be an incredibly exhilarating accomplishment for both the dancer and the audience.

Beyond the documentation of dance, are the teachers/coaches/stager/directors who care for the dances and offer them to current and future generations. In most cases, the individual "homework" preparation that precedes bringing movement and choreography to life in a studio, is a huge time-consuming task that mostly goes unnoticed. As a principal manager of Paul Taylor's repertoire of dances, I have made it one of my responsibilities to review and generate as much helpful documentation as possible about the dances under my care. Hopefully this will underpin an audience experience that transcends expectations of repertory works, and sees each performance as the new and detailed event that they are.

In a recent performance at New York City Ballet, my mind wandered to the proportion of performers who were seen and who were invisible in each dance. The program opened with a work for eight dancers accompanied by a solo pianist in the pit, invisible to the audience. The middle act of the program was a couple of duets. The first duet was to a solo piano score with the pianist playing live on stage. The second was to music for oboe, strings and continuo, all of whom played in the orchestra pit and for whom only the solo oboist had a curtain call on stage. Watching a live performance highlighted the contrast between seeing just two dancers while realizing that the music was being played by 15 to 20 musicians. Then the closing act was for a full orchestra with maybe 25 or so musicians, all of whom I could not see as they were out of sight in the pit, and only the conductor took a bow from the stage. While the orchestra and ensembles in the pit did get acknowledged, they are mostly invisible to audiences, and the Art of these performances was designed that way. 

During a visual art class at high school, I remember a discussing the rationale behind how much Pablo Picasso's line drawing of a dove was worth, and how it needed to be measured in the context of his lifetime of experience. Longevity in pursuing and producing Art is often measured in the efficiency and effectiveness of such artists. Great choreographers bring to life works that elicit their ideas with a clarity that allows audiences to see the work for its beauty of  craft, and be impacted by emotion in ways unique to watching dance peformances. 

Pablo Picasso: Woman with Child (1904), Peace Dove (1961)

At times like now, you could call my work days "unstructured". And this is useful, if I can apply myself to focusing on the endless list of tasks that have no end (at least not in my lifetime of attacking them LOL), like documenting the stage blocking for every dancer in a work. I only say that they have no end, because the end keeps shifting as dances evolve with subsequent stagings and revivals. Count scores also evolve over time as dancers of new generations can sometimes count the music differently and still acheive the same end result. Oh... the development and execution of these scores takes months of dedicated work, that no one is supposed to see. By necessity, the joy of this work must be in the doing!

Professional relationships with companies also evolve as artistic directors and producers retire or move from one institution to another. Keeping on top of such transitions and introducing myself every year is also salient to developing or maintaining artistic relationships with dance companies and conservatories who might take an interest in performing a Taylor dance. Ultimately, a loyal audience member of a company far away from NYC, may not realize the amount of communication and time that had to be spent just getting particular dances lined up to appear in a given season. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just one more strut in the invisible scaffold that gets a dance on stage!

Lastly, for this post, I want to write about how dance tries to achieve what words cannot, and it is an invisible type of communication, that can produce very tangible reactions in the full scope of human emotions. I have laughed at, cried at, yawned at, been repulsed by, and desperately attracted to live dance performances. And the depth of my reactions to seeing dance on a screen is mostly tied to having seen so much in live performances. There is an apparent contradiction when I am describing a visual Art like dancing as being an invisible form of communicating. Yet it is the kinetic nature of dance that paints an impression on us that is not bound in a single moment or written letter. Even finding appropriate words to describe my thoughts seems inadequate and a disappointingly futile hunt for language.

We have created Artificial Intelligence that can produce written documents with minimal human prompting. But I have yet to encounter an A.I. that performs with all the transcendent imperfections of a trained dancer. Dancers spend their lives chasing "perfection" in whatever form that takes in their minds, yet it is an ability to project our flawed humanity to an audience that brings accolades of "perfection". Balance demands a synchornicity of more than one factor. Rhythm is in making sound visible. Shape is matching our bodies to a form based on our cultural and human aesthetics. These are ways to see dance that can only be fulfilled in practice and in the context of viewing a live performance. And the purpose of mastering these "mechanics" is to communicate thoughts, feelings, emotions, et cetera, making the intangible land with impact.

Teaching based on how you learn!

Teaching has always been a part of my professional life, whether it is in dance or in outdoor recreational sports. Yet, like this week, it comes in "stints" where I am teaching intensely for a few days or weeks, and then I am back at a desk or other pursuit. However, my thoughts never stray far from, "What does it mean to be a teacher?" I was still a teenager when I found myself studying ballet pedagogy, and teacher-training practice classes. I was in England where child-labor laws required that any individual under the age of 17, needed to be enrolled in some kind of educational program, and I had already finished my dancer-training curricula.

Screen capture from a video I made to analyze how I demonstrate exercises.

I like to imagine that my teaching of physical skills adapts to meet my students where they are in their knowledge and in their lives in the moment. As I watch people and dancers learning and executing exercises, I try to engage a sort of corporeal empathy where I imagine how that which I am witnessing might feel if I were moving as they are. Then I approach explanations / adjustments / coaching by remembering that people learn movement in different ways. I will attempt to "model" my critique, "verbally explain" my observation, "physically adjust" (with permission of course) the person in action or shape, and "encourage" them to try the exercise without too much forethought.

During my instructor training to teach physical recreational sports, most of the pedagogical research was based on how ski instruction had evolved. This approach directly affected my approach to teaching dance, especially for beginners and intermediate dancers who are still training to master new skills. For most people, learning physical skills employs the four principle learning styles (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic) in slightly different ways. My breakdown works something like this.

Mimicry (visual): being able to accurately imitate a physical action and shape. 

Following verbal commands and/or tactile manipulation (auditory): translating action words and/or physical cues into movement.

Understanding mechanics and/or meaning (reading/writing): mental comprehension of the intent or the physics of an action or shape.

Trial and error (kinesthetic): Making a physical attempt to execute the action or shape.

At Taylor we use video to document dances without costumes or stage light.

This is a clip of me with the company in "Le Grand Puppetier" (title is satirical).

As a stager of Paul Taylor's dances, I always try to be efficient in getting dancers to understand not only the big picture of how their role fits into the choreography, but the complexity of detail in their individual parts. Ultimately, learning the dance is going to be new to most, if not all, of the company. So my responsibility is to provide as many clues and directives as I can, to hopefully suit everyone's different learning styles. And once again, I try to think empathetically about how each dancer might be best supported for how they learn choreography.

I am always astonished at just how much experience lies beneath the seemingly minimalist words and coaching of my most impactful mentors. Experience comes with age, not because you have to be old, but because understanding outcomes is often a reality of having been through more... everything. Nothing sticks with us more than personal experience! 

Parisa Khobdeh being coached by Paul Taylor.

Teaching movement is all about reading and responding to how the students in front of me present themselves in the moment. And the easiest way to move forward in dance, is to be wholly commited to your actions in the moment! 

I am always nervous (maybe even terrified) before the start of a class or rehearsal session. Will I remember what I am there to do? Will I forget some critical point of what I have prepared? Will the dancers be able to do what I ask? Will I be able to maintain the dancers' interests for the duration of the time? Will I have reasonable answers for their questions?... and so on. Experience has given me confidence that once class or rehearsal has begun, the outside world and my self-doubt will quickly be replaced by the immediacy of teaching. And the outcome is invariably a sense of accomplishment, that hopefully has been to the benefit of the students.

Living in New York City, it is easy to forget exactly how much access to great teachers and classes of all interests there is. I was an adult that came to NYC to dance with the Taylor Company, when I realized that learning acrobatics would greatly help my position. Here I was able to find open adult classes to learn tumbling from experienced elite coaches. One of my classmates was easily in his fifties, and had only started learning to do handstands a few years earlier. So it is a privilege to be teaching when there are so many other choices to be had. And it really is a dancer's choice as to where and from whom they take class. 

from studio shoot with Lois Greenfield.

The Taylor Center for Dance Education (TCDE) faces stiff competition in this city where there are so many other options. Yet they are the only place to have open classes in Taylor-based modern as well as offering ballet at all levels, other contemporary forms, and all kinds of dance and fitness modalities, including access to 3-D imaging (Kinotek) of your physical movements to help plan your training regimen. 

Amy Marshall working with Caleb Mansor with 3-D capture technology.

This blog was really started in hopes that it might help get the message out that the Taylor Company is now in midtown Manhattan, NYC, and TCDE is pushing hard to be accessible to recreationalists and professionals alike. For my part, I love being able to fill in to teach ballet or modern classes, and still there is so much more room in all of our classes for dancers or athletes to join in. Taylor Center for Dance Education

Until soon...

Metaphors, Moments, and how Dance reflects Life.

Sometimes I write the titles of posts first, as in this case, and I opted to capitalize only the nouns as one might in German. I find it interesting that these nouns are not solid matter, but constructs of thought and energy that take place in time! 

2001 - with Maureen Mansfield costumed for Taylor's "Black Tuesday"
Photo: Lois Greenfield

I had once been told that as a dancer, "you are a metaphor". The statement caught me off-guard, but it sort of made sense to me. I have since made use of that concept in my teaching and coaching when appropriate. 

2001 - stage setting for Taylor's "Black Tuesday"!

I love that dance is able to transcend words and yet audiences can often ascribe literal meaning to what they saw. We watch people and the world around us move through life, and we draw meaning and associations to our emotions sometimes calculatedly, but mostly unconsciously. For example, you might have a favorite city or place in the world because it is where you fell in love. If a dance somehow draws your thoughts to that city, or to how you felt in that city, you might have a very specific judgment of the work, unlike the person sitting next to you. The converse might also be true where you had an horrific experience in your life and a dance triggers an unpleasant reaction. 

2017 - Michael Apuzzo & Michael Novak in Taylor's "Black Tuesday"
Photo: Paul B. Goode

In both of the above examples, the value of a dance for an audience is that it remains as a work of Art that can spark visceral associations to moments in their lives, whether good or bad. Then the audience can choose to take those feelings away with them, or leave them in the theater. 

Performing dancers can never be a mirror to every audience member, but they do embody many of the things people observe on a daily basis. Great choreography frees dancers to seem as fluid or as hard as elements in nature, to reflect emotions in their postures and interactions with others, and to allow audiences a metaphoric window to their own life experiences retrospectively or aspirationally.

My perspectives on dance are certainly borne out of my own experience and the times in which I live. As such, I appreciate just how much I and my audiences learned from a broad range of the dance repertoire that I had the privilege to perform. Inside of this education is recognizing how brilliantly various choreographic devices are used repeatedly by choreographers. At the root of choreographers making their dancers recognizable for their humanity is their use of gesture within the movement vocabulary of a dance.

Borne out of critical analysis started by François Delsarte into movement expression, "gesture" in dance can be roughly categorized into (my descriptions) emblematic / culturally iconic, illustrative / mimetic, and directive / active.

Paul Taylor's "From Sea to Shining Sea" (1965)

Emblematic / culturally iconic gestures create identifiable images that intend to be recognizable. As an example, Michelangelo's Madonna della Pietá has become a classic image of a woman cradling an adult male on her lap, an image that is often associated with grief, loss, and quiet strength. This visual paradigm shifts when placed in context, but there is still an understanding of vitality in upright stillness and death in a prone body.

Alexei Ratmansky's "Solitude" (2024) for New York City Ballet. Photo: Erin Baiano

2022 - news photo that inspired "Solitude". Photo: AP
"Heart-wrenching image of the teen's father kneeling beside his dead son as he wept and clutched his lifeless hand has emerged, highlighting the stark reality of the brutal consequences Ukrainian citizens face at the hands of the warmongering Russian president.

Illustrative / mimetic gestures are used to amplify words and emotional intent through movement. Without speaking, dancers' actions can evoke a sense of joy, or share in concern for each other, and so much more. 

1997 me & Lisa Viola - Taylor's "Eventide"
Studio shot by Howard Schatz

1997 Francie Huber & Patrick Corbin - Taylor's "Eventide"
Performance shot by Johan Elbers

Directive / active gestures are when movement is intended to communicate an action-reaction type of dialogue without words. This can also hold true for solos and group choreography that seems conversational or narrative by design. 

2005 - Robert Kleinendorst, Patrick Corbin, Michael Trusnovec, and me.

"Offenbach Overtures". Clip from "Acts of Ardor" broadcast.

Tapestry. Life. Dance.

 

Paul Taylor's "Eventide" (Laura Halzack, James Samson, Michelle Fleet, and me)
- 2008 rehearsal -

I recently read a Substack blog post titled "What Uncle Barry Taught Me About Naming". The author muses about her memories and experiences with Barry Moncrieffe, a long time icon of Jamaican dance and culture, who passed away in 2020.  I too knew "Uncle Barry", a moniker of affection often used in reference to Mr. Moncrieffe by many who were not family. 

Barry Moncrieffe (1970s in performance). Photo: Maria LaYacona
- copied from Facebook -

As I read the article, I remembered the multitudes of people who influenced my development as a dancer and as an artist and as a person, most of whom never knew the extent of their impact on me. I was honored to know and be recognised by Uncle Barry throughout my life whenever I was home in Jamaica, and about fifteen years ago I did tell him how much his performances and teaching meant to me when I was a youngster growing up.

Woven tapestry inspired by Gustav Klimt painting
- copied from online post -

However, my momentary thoughts are imagining myself (and anyone) as a tapestry that is woven from distinctive threads that represent individual people (whom we may or may not have ever met), and who add color and dimension to my unique place in the world. A tapestry weaves myriad threads to form a piece of art in which it can be impossible to trace the role a single strand might play, and still each thread holds it together and makes it unique. If each thread were a person in our life... then where we intersect is how we become more than just a single thread. And still each "thread" has its own beginning and end, its own "lifespan".The joy and privilege of human intelligence is that our imagination is not bound by the physical world, or even our mortal existence. Art is one way in which this fabric of lives illustrates the complexity of navigating life itself. Dance, as an Art, has the capacity to transcend words, and when distilled into a singular performance it is a tapestry of tapestries. Choreographers, designers, composers, artists, performers (onstage and off) all bring their own life experience to the moment witnessed.

Paul Taylor's "Speaking in Tongues"
- screen capture - Great Performances video.

The longer we live, it is impossible to not face our mortality, and hopefully recognize how our experience is colored by a multitude of other lives. Looking back at my posts in this blog, I have mentioned only a few of the dancers and artists who have been a part of what made me the dancer I was, and the teacher and coach that I am. Mostly I was writing to aknowledge their ongoing influences on me, whether they have died recently or long past.

Arturo "Artie" Fernandez

This week Arturo Fernandez lost his battle with cancer and I am only one of so many who have been acknowledging the indelible color he added to our tapestries! When I first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I would follow "Artie" through Oakland Ballet Company and end up dancing alongside him for ODC/San Francisco. There is something deeply poignant to look at photographs and videos of our generation dancing together, and to not know who will be the last to see the end of our threads. 

1991 (clip from "Loose The Thread" with ODC)

Artie (cream suit), Ney Fonseca, Frank Everett, and me.

A recent view of Golden Gate Bridge from the Presidio!

Dance is a "human" Art!

It is the end of March, and I wanted to write an entry about my perspective on all that I have been doing since the start of this year. March 1, 2025 was my first post on this blog and, as with life, a lot has changed. I am still debating with myself on maintaining this blog, as my original intent was to let readers know about my background and approach to dance pedagogy. As of today, I find myself writing about why dance continues to intrigue me since taking my first dance class as a child. 

2003 - the outdoor stage in Spoleto, Italy!

Yesterday, March 29, 2026 the sad news of Ben Stevenson passing away spread rapidly through social media. I could not help but think of the numerous dancers, directors, teachers, and technicians I have met and worked with over the years who had all crossed paths with Mr. Stevenson with nothing but great things to say about his impact on their lives and their art. I never had the privilege of meeting him, and yet I empathize with the sense of loss expressed by so many who knew and worked with Stevenson. For me, the legacy of individuals lives on in the impact they had on those around them. A dance legacy ripples through the performers who dance the creative output of choreographers, and whose technique and stagecraft embodies the nuturing from their teachers and coaches. 

Ben Stevenson (copied from Texas Ballet Theater online memoriam)

Dance is a discipline and an Art that is passed on through human interaction, both in its learning process, and in its execution. Choreographers shape the use of movement and technique to express emotions, intents, actions, responses, and create moods through how groups and individuals interact. The genius of some choreographers is how they construct dances that can be felt by audiences without verbal explanations, and how dancers become artists through their embodiment of the choreography. 

In Taylor's "Offenbach Overtures" with Tom Patrick, Andrew Asnes, Patrick Corbin
(photo: Lois Greenfield)

I am not meaning to dismiss the role that music, light and design can play into how dance is an art. However, I do believe that audiences return to witness exceptional dance for its ability to communicate on the most visceral level before words, or even sound, or touch. 

circa 1989 with Michael Armstrong (photo: unknown)

In natural environments, as best as I can currently surmise, that which you can spot from afar can be a striking "first impression". Searching for edible fruit or mushrooms in a jungle, Spotting an exotic orchid in the canopy layer of a rainforest, identifying a red-tailed hawk in a city skyline, and catching a glimpse of a moray eel retreating into a coral reef are all instances where what we see attracts our attention before we can hear, smell or touch the surroundings of what might draw our attention. Similarly, those of us with the privilege of sight use it throughout our lives to identify people we find attractive, avoid volatile situations when we see altercations happening, heed our biases for self-protection based on the appearances of strangers, and so much more. 

Dance is an art of body control in service as much for communication as it is for finding the limits of human ability and coordination. Even the most exceptional of us are benefitted by the encouragement and talents of observant teachers, perspicuous coaches able to explain intent and concepts, inspirational choreographers able to impart their ideas in some way. For me, Christopher Gable was amongst the most influential of my teachers and coaches, and Paul Taylor definitely defined so much of how I "see" choreography in the concert dance world. 

1991, Christopher Gable receives Manchester Evening News award
(photo: Linda Rich)

I think most people currently know of Ilia Malinin as one of the most exceptionally talented competitive figure skaters in the world. He did not get there alone. His parents Roman Skornyakov and Tatiana Malinina, along with Rafael Arutyunyan form his coaching team. While we cheer on the performer that is Malinin, I doubt that he will forget that his coaching team are a big part of why he is a cultural idol of today. 

Yuma Kagiyama, Ilia Malinin, Shun Sato - 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships

Dance also reflects our humanity and or mortality in reflecting an evergreen theme in books and dialogue in plays, movies and dramatic series. The year I retired from dancing with Paul Taylor, I read a book that had just been published titled, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now by Gordon Livingston, M.D. Before you get into the lucid exposition within this book, my memory of the title was to look it up as, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Young". Hah. Irrespective, it highlights the human condition of gaining our life-wisdom almost too late for having the youth and vitality to enjoy the knowledge. In dance we get to embody the wisdom of those who came before us. Many a time, dancers are far more able-bodied than choreographers who dream up what might be possible when they cannot attempt such things themselves, not just in physical terms, but in the effectiveness of dramatic craft. 

James Samson and Paul Taylor (screenshot from "Creative Domain" documentary)

Watching the most recent episode of "The Pitt" on HBO Max, an aged man navigating his loss of independence due to age made the following comment along the lines of (I paraphrase), "Every old person knows what it is to be young, but no young person can know what it is to be old. Thank you for listening." As a dancer well past the performing abilities of my youth, I see the potential in almost every young dancer with whom I work teaching or coaching. And it is not necessarily for those young artists to understand my perspective, but I hope they trust in the wisdom of those who look to see them as they are in the moment. We wish them only the best in their performances and growth as artists. 

I think of dance teachers, choreographers, and coaches as cultural mentors to children, young dancers, and professionals. Some of the most influential of the above have a talent to bring the development of their own gifts to bear on those they have touched throughout their lives. As dancers, we celebrate our beloved mentors with how we move, perform, and give of ourselves to future generations in ways that go beyond words.

Every moment counts...

 It has long been said that "every moment counts" and I take that to mean that "every moment is different". A photograph is a moment in time, a literal split second. If the exposure were to be a whole second, the subject would be blurry. 

2023 studio shot by Fabrice Herrault

I enjoy watching many sports, and during the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano/Cortina, there were many instances when tenths and one hundredths of a second were deciding factors. I wonder if those athletes actually feel time in atomic increments, or is it more that they know when they have had the least number or miscalculations that may have slowed their "perfect" run. Surely, their training over the years of their lives have constituted more moments than any human brain could be expected to recount and consider in the time of their given race/routine/game. And then we have to consider how our bodies "feel" different from moment to the other, much less one year to the next!

March 1, 2025 was when I wrote and published the first entry on this blog, and I have been considering whether or not to keep writing and publishing content. I don't have a large readership, and I have not been strategically attempting to build one. However, I have discovered that it is an easy place to make note of what I was thinking at the time of building a post. In the early posts I was concerned about getting noticed, and felt compelled to find images of myself, as few of the other people appearing in pictures/videos have been enlisted directly to be included on my musings. For now, I may write fewer posts, but I will continue to share them on Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin, when I do find the time and inclination.

Controversies of scoring systems, in-person attendance versus online viewing, et al aside, artistic figure skating as a discipline did bring my thoughts back to concert dance and my particular role in managing the reconstruction of Paul Taylor's choreography for dance companies, training institutions, and audiences. And for the sake of time, I want to focus on how a single moment (more loosely defined than a fraction of a second) can stand out and "stick" in your mind for most of your life.

The figure skaters I grew up watching on television were John Curry, Torvill and Dean, Robin Cousins, and so many others. However, in 1979, I was living in the UK and got to watch Robin Cousins' free skate in the European  Figure Skating Championships. Cousins actually won the silver medal behind Jan Hoffman (East Germany), but there was a specific element in Cousins' routine that caught my attention, and I have never forgotten how beautiful I thought it was, even witnessing it on a televised broadcast. He starts gliding backwards in a spiral on one edge, then seamlessly switched edges while also switching direction to gliding forward in the spiral. I recall seeing it being filmed from an elevated angle, but this clip is what I found on a quick YouTube search. 

1979 European Championships - Robin Cousins spiral clip.

I have looked for this small element in other skaters' routines, but Cousins is the only skater I have seen use it in such a fashion, and with such a sense of ease. My point is that this movement only lasts for a couple of seconds, yet Cousins' performance of this singular move has remained with me, while I had forgotten practically all other details about watching the competition.

From both on the stage as a dancer, and in the audience watching, I feel fortunate to have experienced a few similar "moments" that transcended time and events. These are the moments that I hope future dancers and audiences will have a chance to be similarly surprised for themselves. I have heard from dancers and audiences how Taylor's dances have provided such moments for them.

I work with, and manage the contracts for, about a dozen alumni dancers of Paul Taylor Dance Company, all of whom are from the generations that worked for Paul Taylor while he was still alive; many are even amongst the original cast on whom Taylor created the dances needing to be taught / coached / mounted onto the stage for organizations mentioned above. Each of us has a unique perspective on the same work, and we can all bring about trancendent moments by the dancers and productions because of our differences. As a "director" I try to provide as much support material and history on the dances in question for myself and other stagers, to provide integrity for the roles, the steps, and the intent of the dance as a whole. Also, we had the privilege of Taylor himself rehearsing us in multiple revivals of dances from his repertoire throughout the decades. How each of us gets to the "end product" is pretty unique to us as individuals, and it is the feedback from the institutions and the performances that helps determine the relevance and necessity of Taylor's dances for today and for the future.

In 2026 there are multiple productions of Taylor's "Company B" being performed by different companies. The productions have been, or will be staged variously by Patrick Corbin, Constance Dinapoli, Amy Kleinendorst and myself, all around the USA. 

Diablo Ballet performed "Company B" in Walnut Creek, California!

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre performed "Company B" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!

Texas Ballet Theater performs "Company B" in both Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas!

Nevada Ballet Theatre performs "Company B" in Las Vegas, Nevada!

How a dance evolves in memory and in details...

In 2026 alone, Paul Taylor's Company B, set to 1940's music sung by The Andrews Sisters, will have been performed by five different companies around the USA, other than Paul Taylor Dance Company itself. I would love to see all of the productions and witness the many artistic variances that come to light with different dancers, stagers and production venues. But time and distance are barriers to such aspirations. 

Screen capture of me dancing "Pennsylvania Polka" with Annmaria Mazzini circa 2000

In truth, I believe that many audience members would be fascinated to see two different companies perform the same dance, and have! If you are a fan of George Balanchine, I imagine you might have seen more than one company perform his Serenade or maybe one section (if not the whole ballet) of Jewels, performed by different ballet companies. 

Beloved company member Mark Arvin made the role of Bugle Boy his own when Houston Ballet premiered the landmark work Company B, choreographed by modern dance legend Paul Taylor at The Kennedy Center in 1991.
- The Washington Post (review)

Dances are living "documents" which can evolve and mature as they are danced, and as they are viewed. Those of us who are charged with restaging the works are similar to movie or stage directors. We need to have a clear understanding of intent, musicality, physical patterns in space, and dramatic rhythm from beginning to end of the dance. And, of course, an intimate familiarity with the steps. I often equate steps to being like words in a script, and how those steps are executed can be like coaching a linguistic accent and eliciting the underlying emotions behind the "words" so they can be felt by an audience. Every dancer is different, and casting as well as their natural abilities as performers will hopefully make evident the best pairing for dancers to roles within a dance. I have culled images from the internet and the reviews of the world premiere of Company B, which was commissioned by The Kennedy Center for Houston Ballet. Based on a special initiative from The Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, Company B would join the repertoire of five additional American ballet companies within a few years in Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and Boston.

Jeff Wadlington was the dancer who originated Bugle Boy for Paul Taylor Dance Company. Photo: Jack Mitchell

Company B is never long out of rotation at Paul Taylor Dance Company, and it is one of the perennial dances which most dancers in the company have performed, often in various different roles. With each revival of the work, Taylor would look at the dancers in front of him and sometimes make changes to little details. I won't presume to know what he was thinking at any given time, but he would often say that changes were for the benefit of the dancers in front of him, and for the clarity of his intent with the choreography. So, understanding the history of how the dance has evolved under Taylor's own eyes is a good start to making informed artistic decisions about the details, when teaching the work to a new generation of dancers. 

"Oh Johnny Oh!" performed by Paul Taylor Dance Company and by Houston Ballet.

Sometimes the details of which I speak are things like the accessories worn by soloists for specific songs. You might notice that in both of the premiere photos fo Houston Ballet, the men are wearing a cap. And Santo Loquasto, who designed the costumes, removed the caps from the costume list shortly after the premiere. Then a few years later, Santo added a pair of black-rimmed glasses for the man dancing "Oh Johnny Oh!". Another costume detail is that the woman dancing in "Rum and Coca-Cola" only has a skirt with a red lining while dancing that song. During the rest of the dance, she wears a pair of pants. In the original production this woman was the only one with any kind of hair accessory, and later, Santo added small pops of red color in the hair for all the women. 

"Rum and Coca-Cola" was originated by Mary Cochran for Paul Taylor Dance Company, and when American Ballet Theatre premiered the work it was danced by Misty Copeland.

The above mentioned details were noted by several dancers who were in original casts of Company B for different companies. Classical ballet has taught audiences to see different dancers in basically the same choreography to the same music. So it is the individual artistry of the dancer that both "tells" the story and shows you who they are. Well crafted choreography is the skeleton on which dancers get to build rapport with the other cast members on stage and, equally as important, with the audience. With Taylor's dances, there is an astonishing economy of steps that often looks familiar, yet is a vernacular unique to the language of the specific dance, and executing sequences are most often tied rhythmically to the phrasing of the music. Once the "steps" are learned, the dancer's "expression" needs to be both believable, and understood. I don't mean that there has to be a literal meaning for every step or dance, but movement in dance is a language that "speaks" in non-verbal ways. So I often ask dancers to "make me believe" that what they are doing is the only way they know how to express themselves in the dance, using the steps that they have been given. 

With the dancers of Diablo Ballet, January 2026.

Today there are generations of dancers who have learned and performed Company B. Some of the original cast members from Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and other companies have moved on from their performing careers into teaching, coaching and directing companies themselves. They in turn are looking to share their experience of performing Company B, with their own company dancers, students and audiences. I take this to be evidence of the work's success on many levels. Hopefully, the reality of seeing the work come to life many years later, will be as impactful as whatever happened to them as dancers that has kept the dance memorable and present in their minds. 

Diablo Ballet dancers: Lizzie, Diego, Ali in various roles from Company B. Photos: Tue Nam Ton

In 1993, Taylor formed a second company, Taylor 2, which was comprised of only six dancers. The purpose of this smaller company (Paul Taylor Dance Company is sixteen dancers) was so that it might serve to perform Taylor's dances in the kinds of venues and touring gigs Taylor did himself when starting out. Taylor 2 would be cheaper, easier to travel, provide residencies, and of course perform works from Taylor's repertoire. However, by the early nineties, Taylor's most popular dances were created for casts larger than six dancers. Company B was originally created for thirteen dancers. So Taylor decided to adapt some of his most in-demand dances for the six dancers of Taylor 2, including Company B. Of the productions being licensed this year, Diablo Ballet in Walnut Creek is the only company that needed to do the six-dancer version, on account of the size of their company. It has been wonderful to get both positive and measured feedback from many people intimately familiar with the dance. For my part, I hope the dancers I got to work with are incredibly proud of what they accomplished. They all made their mark on the legacy of the dance, and did amazingly well. I expected nothing less. 

Diablo Ballet takes a bow as the six-member cast of Company B.
(Alina, Marco, Lizzie, Eli, Ali, Diego)

(Marco, Nicole, Olivia, Eli, Amanda, Diego)

Job - Stager/Régisseur/Rehearsal Director/Répétiteur/Einstudierung

 Finding the right title for a job is an oft contested issue in every institution. Yet it is the institutional and individual histories that define the responsibilities of each position. While English has many words that have been adopted from other languages, like French and German, one of my responsibilities in writing up license agreements for Paul Taylor's choreographic works, is to give a title to the job of staging/reconstructing/rehearsing/overseeing a dance for an institution that wants to perform one of Taylor's dances. 

Teaching class for Diablo Ballet in January 2026

Mr. Taylor was extremely proud of his American-ness and believed that written language was as particular as the details in his dances. So he preferred that an English word be used to describe the job of remounting one of his choreographic works on another company or school. Within the Taylor Company the care of Taylor's works, and all other repertoire to be performed, falls to the Artistic Director and the Rehearsal Director. For people setting the work on outside organizations I settled on using Stager, even though the only dictionary definition I could find was for someone who decorates and furnishes a physical environment to enhance its appeal (e.g. the person who sets up your house to appeal to buyers for an open-house showing).

Within the North American concert-dance industry, rehearsal director is the general fallback term used, whether it is an in-house or freelance individual that is caring for the choreography that dancers need to learn, rehearse, and perform. In ballet companies you will often find rehearsal directors being referred to as répétiteurs or régisseurs. The latter is often a person with more experience whose responsibilities go beyond just making sure that choreography is performed to the best technical standards. Régisseurs might have more responsibility than répétiteurs to the intent, context, and stage production (lighting, sets, costumes) of particular dances. But each institution gets to define the titles and the responsibilities of its staffing.

Stagers of Paul Taylor dances must have a very deep and close knowledge of all aspects of the individual works for which they are charged with remounting on a company or school. More than just the choreography, stagers will be responsible for approving casting, costumes, lighting, stage appearance, cues, music, et cetera. As such, institutions have the privilege of working with original cast members who were in the studios as Taylor created the work to be performed, or alumni dancers who have had the chance to perform the dance many times over. Taylor's audience and critical favorites have been kept in rotation in varying cycles, but if you danced with the company for more than ten years, you might well have danced in works from every decade of the company's existence since the 1950's.

In my parallel blog Richard's 2025 Fulbright to New Zealand you can read more about my own perspectives of what it takes to actually stage a Taylor dance. As the licensing director for all of Taylor's dances, I have been building histories and supporting materials for other stagers that mirror the kinds of information I have found to be invaluable when leading a staging project of my own. This might include interviews with original cast members, as well as documentation of what changes/adaptations Mr. Taylor may have made with subsequent revivals of the work for the Taylor Company itself. Additionally, Taylor has the largest number of Labanotated scores for individual dances, second only to George Balanchine.

"Company B", to songs of The Andrews Sisters, is one of Taylor's most popular dances to be licensed and performed by ballet companies around the world, since its premiere by Houston Ballet in 1991. Following the first decade or so of perennial performances, it has never been out of the annual repertory of the Taylor Company for more than a couple of years. In the first few months of 2026, "Company B" is being performed around the USA by four different ballet companies, and I have had the good fortune that the Taylor Foundation approved me to set the work alongside my peers. I had to give up a good portion of my field work to direct the licensing division of the Taylor Foundation. And applying my staging skills helps to move forward how I create documentation for, and application of, legacy works of dance for current and future generations of dancers and audiences.

True legacy dances are not just artifacts or intellectual exercises for dancers and audiences. Dance relies on the daily and seasonal practices of both technical and artistic craft for the performers. Great dances challenge dancers to meet technical demands, as well as to hone their artistic craft of embodying a role with their own unique presence. Such dances also offer audiences more than just entertainment and chances to see their favorite dancers on stage; they can transcend the mechanics of notes, steps, designs, and touch on emotions in ways unique to dance as an Art. While "Company B" may evoke the 1940's war time era, its rendering of human emotions range from aspiration, to optimism, to denial, to acceptance, and many human traits. It touches audiences for making music and emotions visible. Learning and seeing such works of Art sets a benchmark in life for performing and seeing other dances that help us to grow as people and as a culture.

Here's a chance to see clips of the stagers as they danced "Company B" over the years. We all bring such a wealth of experience as professional dancers and teachers to our work in passing on Taylor's works to new dancers and new audiences. I am also gratified by the fact that the directors who chose "Company B" for their companies to perform, have all had very different memorable experiences with the work, whether from dancing in it during their careers, or witnessing and aspiring to dance it in their younger years.

I was in Walnut Creek, California in early January to set "Company B" on the dancers of Diablo Ballet. 

Dancing to "Pennsylvania Polka" with Annmaria Mazzini, circa 2000.

Patrick Corbin was also working in January with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

"Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!" Patrick Corbin with company women, circa 2000.

Connie Dinapoli is starting work in February with Texas Ballet Theater in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. 

Constance Dinapoli with David Grenke in "There'll Never Be Another You", circa 1992.

 Amy Young-Klenendorst will also be working in February with Nevada Ballet Theatre in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Amy Young with Sean Mahoney in "There'll Never Be Another You", circa 2013.

Throughout his life, Paul Taylor, had received commissions to create dances for companies other than his own. However, after a few disastrous projects, the last of which he and the company in question aborted, Taylor decided to only create new works with his own dancers. We were hand picked by Taylor to learn how to dance for him, and to take direction from him. Once the dance had been created in the studio, the designers (lighting, sets, costumes) would come in to make their contributions. Then the work would be transferred to the commissioning company by a designated stager, who was typically a current dancer or alumni of the company, to mount the work on the outside company. Taylor would attend final rehearsals and get it onto the stage for the world premiere by the commissioning company. Only then would his own company make their premiere of the work. "Company B" was one such commission.