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 should be 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)