I’ve interviewed and covered Paul Taylor for years. So I was thinking that there wasn’t much that I didn’t know about this modern master of dance.
But from the delectable opening moments of a new documentary about the gentle giant, I knew I was wrong. With meditative music playing in the background, there he was, the 1966 version and one clip that I had never seen. All of the historic hype about him popped off the screen — the muscular fluidity, the soft yet robust phrasing, the undeniable star power.
But in another instant, there he was, older and wiser. It was a shock; all of a sudden he was still tall, but much thinner, almost gaunt. Yet, at approximately age 80, he was capable of kneeling on the floor to further his choreographic process, an achievement in itself.
Immediately came some quotes. I had read his book, Private Domain: An Autobiography, a long time ago and it is still one of my favorites. Just the way he talked and the way he wrote and the way he made dances was so accessible, but, upon deeper inspection, so much more. He drew you into a deceptive and intriguing maze, but with dance.
How did he do it? “It’s the way I research, is watch people. And if you watch, and steal, like I do, if you’re making dances, there’s a lot of gold there. Dance, I’ve always thought, is like poetry. Poems don’t always spell everything out, you know. They leave room between the lines. And I think a dance can be like that, too.”
And that was just within the first two minutes.
This documentary then follows in that vein, allowing me to dig through my own gold mine of inspiration.
Taylor held his complexities close to the chest. His process, by his own admission and others in the documentary, was “private.” Still this film, which concentrates on one of Taylor’s last pieces, “Three Dubious Memories,” (inspired by famed Japanese film director Akira Kurasawa’s “Rashoman”) offers valuable life and artistic lessons by one of modern dance’s masters.
Enjoy this slice of Paul Taylor’s choreographic life. Given his decades of dancemaking to peruse and with his work ethic quite apparent in the film, I assume there will be more film nuggets to come.
Creative Domain is available on Amazon to rent or buy. https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Taylor-Creative-Domain/dp/B0B8JPNRT5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2M27NJHFNGD32&keywords=paul+taylor+creative+domain&qid=1669161726&sprefix=Creative+Domain%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1
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