Paul Taylor in India - Pt 1

 Who knew that India would play into such landmarks in my dance career? My first visit to India was with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1997 for the country's 50th anniversary of independence from British rule.

1997 in Paul Taylor's "Prime Numbers" that premiered in New Delhi! Photo: Lois Greenfield

There is so much more to say about India, but the focus of this blog is how dance for me is a bridge between and into different disciplines of physical practice. As I have mentioned previously, I also think that my approach to dance is similar to my approach to life as a whole, trying to bridge cultures that have shaped who I am as a person today. In 2018, I returned to India for six months to teach dance and explore the many ways that dance exemplifies "international diplomacy" attempting to overcome political borders. Now I have returned for a short three-week stay, once again under the auspices of Paul Taylor's repertoire and the Taylor School.

1997 visiting the Taj Mahal, Agra, India

It is possible for you to read about my 2018 Fulbright by visiting this related blogsite Qajaq Dancer where I kept a blog going for 7 months.

I just landed back in Mumbai last night, and will be getting my bearings today as well as teaching my first two classes at the Institute of Classical and Modern Dance (ICMD) which is run by Pia Sutaria, who recently endorsed my teaching in NYC, both here and through my Instagram page.

Perspectives on the relationship between ballet and modern dance might better be perceived through the eyes of dancers for whom neither ballet nor modern dance is an understood form of training. In India, ballet, modern, jazz, contemporary, tap are all considered "Western" dance styles. As such, it can be confusing to clarify if there is an order in which to study such varied styles, and to know how they can also be highly complementary.

For the next three weeks, I will be teaching both classical ballet and modern classes to mostly the same students. And it is always interesting as a teacher to see how dancers react to having different styles taught to them by the same teacher. From my perspective each discipline has its own goals and progression. I come prepared to teach a certain class, and yet I am grateful to have the experience to adapt what I am teaching to the dancers in the class. I have often been known to veer precipitously away from my "lesson plan" as I suddenly imagine that the dancers before me would benefit from a very different emphasis in class.

In a very reductive statement, my approach to Ballet is often about placement and alignment of the skeleton in a vertical axis to perform the desired technical and aesthetic movements and shapes that mark the style. while Modern is often about building core strength and articulating joints and musculature to discover an aesthetic not necessarily bound by a vertical alignment, or symmetry of shape. Maybe I will discuss this more specifically after I have been teaching these back-to-back classes this week.

Open classes in NYC at the Taylor School continue to build, and I hope that even just one new dancer will wander into a class each week. I am just one of an amazing roster of teachers, and I am flattered when dancers want to take from me specifically. But I have also learned that the every teacher has something from which we can all learn!

Hopefully I will remember to take a picture or two of my classes, and maybe even a short video clip. It is exciting to see both familiar and new faces here in India.

PS. On the 29th August 2018, I flew the same route of NYC to London connecting to Mumbai. It was the very same day that Paul Taylor died, and I actually received the news when I landed in London. So I had the whole trip to Mumbai to contemplate that I would not be around for the majority of the events that took place honoring Taylor, as I was to remain in India for six months! My contribution to Taylor's legacy in that moment was to be sharing what I knew of his dances, and him personally, through my teaching and presentations. It was strange to realize that in a country of 1.3 billion people, I was the only person who had the privilege of working and dancing for Paul Taylor. This trip from London to Mumbai had me thinking about how the path of the plane had to navigate between the militarized airspace of countries at war. Could dance be, is dance, a diplomatic phenomena that might bring some balance to the future?!