Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

March 12, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Arts & Lectures and The Lobero present the Paul Taylor Dance Company, one of modern dance’s premier troupes, at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

The Paul Taylor Dance Company, one of the shining lights of modern dance, will perform a program of Arden Court, The Word and Piazzolla Caldera on Friday and Saturday, April 19 and 20 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Led by the legendary choreographer Paul Taylor, the ensemble has performed Mr. Taylor’s works in 60 countries and more than 450 cities. Taylor has created over a hundred dances, including classics like Esplanade, Cascade, Company B and Aureole. His works have been licensed for performance by more than 65 companies worldwide, including American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and Teatro alla Scala of Milan. In its July 2000 issue, Dance Magazine featured a 70th birthday tribute to Paul Taylor that included a paean by Clive Barnes that called the dance master a “genius,” insisting, “Taylor is arguably the most inventive and most versatile choreographer alive today.”

The program for the company’s Santa Barbara performances reaches back to 1981 with Arden Court. The piece, designed by Gene Moore and set to baroque music by William Boyce, is probably the most classic work on the program, although it surprises with the lightness of movement by its corps of mostly male dancers. The Word, from 1998, is perhaps the most quirky of the evening’s dances, set to a commissioned score by Leonard Bernstein-acolyte David Israel and designed by Taylor’s frequent collaborator, Santo Loquasto. Dressed as schoolboys, the cast enacts rituals of hazing and acceptance that push the vocabulary of dance. Piazzolla Caldera, from 1997, is set to the scintillating tangos of Argentine bandoneon master Astor Piazzolla. Again designed by Loquasto, this work avoids cliched tango moves to get at the essence of the passion and tension of this romantic world. Anna Kisselgoff, writing in The New York Times, calls the dance “intense, steamy and brutal,” hailing it as “one of Mr. Taylor’s most exciting pieces.”

Paul Taylor grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. He studied painting and was a member of the swim team at Syracuse University before arriving in New York City, where he studied dance at Juilliard. From 1955 until 1962 he was a soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company, while presenting his own work with members of the Company he began in 1954. To help support his fledgling company in this period, he worked on window displays at Tiffany’s and Bonwit Teller’s with his friend, artist Robert Rauschenberg. In 1966 the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation was created to help Mr. Taylor bring his works to the largest possible audience, facilitate his ability to make new dances and preserve his growing repertoire. Among his numerous accomplishments, he has been awarded the National Medal of Arts, a Kennedy Center Honors Award, the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Paul Taylor’s autobiography, Private Domain, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf and, in paperback, by North Point Press, has been re-released by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The book was nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as the most distinguished biography of 1987. Taylor and his Company are the subject of Dancemaker, Matthew Diamond’s award-winning, Oscar-nominated film, hailed by Time Magazine as “perhaps the best dance documentary ever.”

“Taylor’s dance company functions as an eye-opening high-wire act balancing cerebral subversion and awesome entertainment,” states the San Francisco Examiner. “Nothing the choreographer does qualifies as mere eye candy. Most of his pieces challenge contemporary ideas of what dance is.”

After both performances members of the company will take part in a Meet-the-Artists discussion. Members of the company will also teach a dance class on Saturday, April 20 from 1:30–3:30 pm at the Carrillo Recreation Center. This class is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance; for information please phone 966-6950.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company is the fourth ArtAbounds event of the 2001-2002 performing arts season. An innovative partnership between UCSB Arts & Lectures and The Lobero, ArtAbounds permits both presenters to bring to Santa Barbara international artists of the highest stature that neither could bring on its own. This project is funded in part by the Audience Development and Marketing Grant Program using funds provided by the City of Santa Barbara in partnership with the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission.

The performance by Paul Taylor Dance Company is sponsored by the Santa Barbara News-Press and KEYT 3 TV. It is funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Phillip Morris Companies Inc., Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and The British Council.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.

©2002 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara