Taylor in Germany & Austria. Thank you Martin!

Change is inevitable, and when an artistic director steps away from a company on which he/she has left an impression on the Art, it is often a bittersweet moment. Ballet as a language lives in both its performances of the classics and its use in contemporary works, and all the choreography in between. In general terms, the classical ballet of today whose aesthetic I have known evolved from work by choreographers like Auguste Bournonville and Marius Petipa in the early 1800's, Bronislava Nijinska, Vaslav Nijinsky, Michel Fokine, Frederick Ashton in early 1900's and forward through Maurice Bejart, Jiri Kylian, George Balanchine, Hans van Manen, William Forsythe, and so many more... Amongst current choreographers of ballet that I find fascinating is Martin Schläpfer, whose work has never been performed live in the USA. In truth, access to seeing any of his work on video or livestream was only available in the USA as a result of broader international access in response to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. The Wiener Staatsoper made their livestreams of performances of Martin's work, and others, available worldwide, giving you a chance to see the exceptional dancers and productions.

Next weekend, on Sunday 29th June, 2025 will mark Martin Schläpfer's retirement from the ballet directorship of the Vienna State Ballet, where he also served as chief resident choreographer. For more than three decades, he has directed and choreographed contemporary ballets for companies in Germany and Austria. Alongside of his own works, Martin curated dance programs for his dancers to perform works by George Balanchine and Hans Van Manen, as well as works rooted in a modernist background by the likes of Kurt Jooss, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Mark Morris and Paul Taylor.

2016 with Ballett am Rhein cast of Taylor's "Esplanade"

I had the pleasure of staging four different Paul Taylor dances under the invitation of Martin, two while he directed Ballett am Rhein, and subsequently two more when he took over at the Wiener Staatsballett in Austria. 

Martin in 2017 working on a world premiere with Ballett am Rhein.

Martin championed the evolution of modern dance as well for his dancers and audiences in the different houses he directed. It was amazing to share space, dancers and performances with other regisseurs restaging works by the above mentioned choreographers. I loved that the dancers under Martin's direction were always unique and committed artists with a hunger for fluency in the breadth of technique and artistry demanded of them to perform such a range of dance. I am also honored that so many of the dancers with whom I had the pleasure of working with continue to touch base with me on occasion. Even some with whom I did not work, have graciously offered me collegial acknowledgement of adding to their artistic homes.

2016 with Ballett am Rhein

In 2019, Martin licensed Taylor's "Offenbach Overtures" and Ballett am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Germany, became the first company other than Paul Taylor's namesake company to perform the dance that premiered in 1995.

2019 with Ballett am Rhein

In 2020, during the the height of the pandemic, Martin took over as dance director for Wiener Staatsballett in Vienna, and was followed by some of the dancers with whom I had worked in Düsseldorf. When he chose to license "Promethean Fire" for the dancers in Vienna, I would have the pleasure of working with familiar and new dancers. However, rehearsals to learn the dance in 2021 would not end in a performance that year. We did get the whole dance learned and a rough run through of the dance in the studio was as far as we could get before the premiere performances would be postponed... until 2023. 

2021 in the studios of the Wiener Staatsoper

Most of the dancers who learned "Promethean Fire" in 2021 were still active and dancing in 2023 when I returned to get the work onto the stage. 

2023 after final rehearsals prior to the company premiere in the Volksoper Wien

2023 also saw the dancers at the Volksoper Wien perform "Dandelion Wine"

In short order after the long awaited company premiere by the Wiener Staatsballett of "Promethean Fire", Martin requested to license another work that had not been previously performed by a company other than Paul Taylor Dance Company, "Dandelion Wine" from 2000. This time he wanted the dancers of the Volksoper Wien to have their own program of dances including a work by Martin himself, the Taylor work, and "Ligeti Essays" by Karole Armitage. It was a unique opportunity for me to work with the dancers of both houses of the Wiener Staatsoper! 

2023 on stage after the premiere evening at the Volksoper Wien

I can only express my humblest gratitude to Martin Schläpfer for inviting me to share in the wealth of exceptional humans with whom he has worked, dancers, rehearsal directors, ballet masters and mistresses, adminstrators, and so many more. Bravo!

Paul Taylor's movement vocabulary? Ballet vocabulary?

 It has been a little longer than I might have liked since I last posted. However, I think this "gap" speaks to, "what do teachers do between the classes they teach?" My primary work in life, of late, is as the director of licensing for Paul Taylor's dances. What this means is that I am responsible for contracting and providing rexources to companies and schools outside of Paul Taylor's own organizations to learn, mount and perform Taylor's dances. These resources include a professional "stager", who is intimately familiar with the dance to be learned, historic and technical information specific to the dance, and artistic stewardship of all aspects of a production (music, costumes, sets, lighting, et al). While I still go out to stage works, I also coordinate a good number of other professional alumni dancers from Paul Taylor Dance Company to work with as many different institutions as I can muster.

As a dance teacher, I love to have a plan in place, and also be prepared to adjust that plan as needed to suit the dancers' needs in class. This is also true when my mission is to get one of Taylor's dances taught, coached and staged for performance. Over the past couple of months, I have had the pleasure of leading the reconstruction of an early Taylor dance, "Tablet" (1960) for Paul Taylor Dance Company itself.

Looking at reconstructing a dance from a single, fuzzy, film from 1961, led me to spending a lot of time digging through the Taylor archives to look at interview transcriptions, programs, Mr. Taylor's notebooks of his preparations for creating the dance, and reflecting on what I knew about the original performers. Gathering as much information as possible is not intended to replicate a carbon-copy of the original performance, but is more about HOW a unique choreographic vocabulary might have been created to form a whole dance. I then used my own methods of notating the movement, spatial patterns, and musicality to be clear that I had a full understanding of what I hoped each dancer might be doing at any given point in time and movement. Once the sequence is clear to the dancers, it becomes a matter of coaching them to be their best artistic selves as they find meaning and musicality in the choreography.

I find this process fascinating, and also similar to my approach to teaching ballet and modern dance disciplines. The more I can get to the heart of where in the body a movement might start, it is easier to imagine the infinite possibilities of "taking the next step". Ballet has a relatively, recognizible lexicon, yet its execution can be considerably different from one style to another. However, if you are well versed in a style, you have all of the components needed to adapt to the demands of a sequence of steps.

Modern dance has often been about creating/finding/building a NEW vocabulary of movement and modulating the execution to achieve a new style, or to illustrate a specific intent. The volume and breadth of Paul Taylor's repertoire provides me with clear objectives of both technique and attention to detail, to provide tools for dancers to embrace and enjoy his choreography within the structure of a dance class, not unlike the structure of a ballet technique class.

But preparing and teaching a class is a little different than getting a whole dance together and ready for performance in front of an audience. However, the very beginnings of that preparation is very much the same for me. Classes are meant to have achievable goals within each session. Dances are expected to take dozens of sessions to achieve their goals!

I hope you will find an opportunity to see the extraordinary dancers of Paul Taylor Dance Company in a theater near you, if you are not able to see them here in New York City!

Kristin Draucker & Devon Louis in Tablet at the Joyce Theater in NYC. Photo: Steven Pisano

Along with another dance "Churchyard" (1969), these two dances have not been performed since 1976, and they have started their most recent run by the current Taylor dancers at the Joyce Theater here in NYC through this coming Sunday, June 22, 2025. 

Jessica Ferretti, Alex Clayton, Elizabeth Chapa, John Harnage, Emmy Wildermuth in Churchyard
at the Joyce Theater in NYC. Photo: Steven Pisano

My contribution to these revivals is generously included in an article in the NY Observer 'Tablet' is an archaic courtship...

The NY Times has already published a preview 'Raw and Untamed' and a review 'Irreverence and Resurrection'

It is always exciting to be involved in bringing dance to life with performances by dancers today! While I never had the opportunity to perform "Tablet", I did have access to what little record and resources there are around the dance. And I was able to call upon my own personal experiences with Paul Taylor alongside the original cast of Dan Wagoner and Pina Bausch!

At Taylor Dance West in midtown Manhattan, my classes in Adult Beginner Ballet (Tuesdays at 6:00pm) and in Open Taylor Technique (Saturdays at 2:00pm), continue to grow, and I hope more of you will join me in the months to come! However, I will be away in Mumbai, India for three weeks in July to teach a Paul Taylor based summer intensive program alongside the Taylor School Manager, Amanda Stevenson. More about this in future posts...

Getting back to basics can free your creativity!

 While staging Paul Taylor's "Roses" on Rambert dance company in London, England a number of years ago, I took ballet class with the dancers, and met the teacher, Luc Louis de Lairesse. He recently published online an interview with me which you can read on his Substack page here luclouisdelairesse - walkyourtalk-interviews 

in Paul Taylor's "Roses" with Lisa Viola. Photo: Lois Greenfield

I may have mentioned before that I have always loved to return to basic instructional exercises and classes, no matter how long I had been dancing. At Paul Taylor there was no required "company" class and each dancer developed their own "warm up" routine. If you watched closely, you could see how they were using the most fundamental movements and exercises to prepare their bodies to take on the challenges of the day, whether in a creative rehearsal or a live performance. To this day, I could probably teach you, quite accurately, the sequence of basic exercises that I used for almost 15 years to "warm up" for my performances with the Taylor Company. Dancing for Mr. Taylor meant learning his aesthetic style and unique technical demands by learning and rehearsing his repertoire of dances. In my generation dancing with the company, all of the choreography was by Paul Taylor with only a couple of exceptions.

Finding freedom within choreographed sequences that needed to be precisely and musically reproduced came for me through hours of thought and practice. Not executing choreography and technique without precision could lead to disaster! Yet performing, for me, was about focusing more on the intent and dramatic purpose behind the choreography. To get there, constantly sharpening the execution of my "basics" meant that I did not have to think about the "how" of dancing, but more on the "why"!

Regular classes in ballet, modern, Judo, writing, drawing... all contribute to our enjoyment of expression and interaction. And mostly the classes I am talking about guide us through the basics every single time. There is a wonderful article, written by a former professional dancer turned neuroscientist, Julia F. Christensen, that speaks to how returning to basics can offer ongoing benefits to our creativity and expression. aeon.co/essays/you-need-to-build-mastery-in-order-to-find-your-flow? 

As dancers gather in Taylor Modern classes here at the Taylor School this week, many are preparing for the open audition to secure a place in the Paul Taylor Dance Company. And many have different dance basics to which they can and should turn to keep them dancing at their best! Yet for the dozens of dancers who will come to audition, there will only be a couple of jobs available. So the personal reward of enjoying their individual accomplishments and command over their own bodies should be their first priority. Their sense of fulfillment will make them stand out, and it will be a happier moment if the people watching both perceive and invite that dancer to join the company. Yet it will be a happy event nonetheless, if a sense of self-worth and accomplishment is the starting point.

As life gets busy... a class routine is centering!

 I realized a couple of days ago, that I was somewhat "due" to write a post on this blog. The classes I teach every Thursday morning are at Igal Perry's studio, Peridance, for a 2-year certificate program in dance performance. Those classes have wound down for the summer, and this year, my summer teaching will be in Mumbai, India. In a couple previous posts, dancers I met in 2018 during my Fulbright project kindly sent short video endorsements of my teaching. I am looking forward to encountering them and many others when I am back for a short three weeks at the end of this month.

2007 in "Musical Offering" by Paul Taylor. Photo: Hiroyuki Ito

I had hoped this blog would encourage readers in NYC to come and take classes from me, specifically the ballet classes I have started for the Taylor School. Locally, I am not known for my ballet conservatory background or the breadth of 19th and 20th century ballets I performed over a ten year career as a classical dancer in England and the USA. I am honored to have become known for my ongoing association as a "Taylor" modern dancer, and I am also aware of how much my ballet and Afro-Carribean background contributed to my modern career... and longevity within the dance field.

Having regular weekly classes in ballet and modern does consistently remind me of how lucky I am to have this privilege to get back into a studio. The clarity of structure and the effort to achieve the ideal for each student and each exercise, has never gotten "old" for me. Dancing is about "doing" and when so much of my work is sitting at this very computer to handle my role as an Arts administrator, I relish being in a studio where all of my concentration is on being in the moment, not reviewing data and not having to anticipate tomorrow! 

I have been assisting Paul Taylor Dance Company in part of their preparations to perform at the Joyce Theater here in NYC, June 17-22, 2025. The artistic director, Michael Novak, asked me to take charge of restaging an early duet, "Tablet", from 1960. Fortunately I have access to Taylor's conceptual notebooks, and a single video taken back in 1961, from which to work. The other landmark work being revived is "Churchyard", also by Taylor, and reconstructed under Novak's guidance and assistance from original cast members. 

The work, and the joy, of teaching and staging work is being as prepared as I can prior to walking in the door, and to have the confidence to make changes and adapt, depending on who is in the room, and what is needed. 

Here is another kind endorsement from a dancer who grew up in New Zealand, and has settled in London, England working as a personal trainer and life coach. There is so much opportunity in our lives to write a unique story, and if you would like for dance to be a part of that story here in NYC, I hope you will come by and see whether my classes my suit your interests.

Thank you so much Daniel McCarroll for your generosity with your memories of working with me.

In 2011, I had staged Paul Taylor's "Company B" for the students at the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington, which is what Daniel references. This was the only pic I could find with Daniel in rehearsal from that year. 

Daniel McCarroll & Dane Holland inset blow up, rehearsal at NZSD 2011

However... Stephen A'Court did catch a shot of Daniel as Bugle Boy in Taylor's "Company B"! 

In 2023, I had the chance to catch up with Daniel in London! 

London 2023!