Too long overdue, a visit from the Paul Taylor Dance Company is an early holiday gift. Fierce or funny, silken or stabbing, the modern dance modalities unfold in a varied repertoire for performers who turn Olympian athleticism into poetry.
The touring program glories in qualities that have made American master Taylor stand out for more than a half-century. The National Medal of Arts winner’s post-9-11 Promethean Fire, with complex formations in flux, responds to crisis and struggle with a statement of hope: After dancers pile up as if on a pyre, two flicker away to carry on with luminous vigor. There are daring and nobility at almost every step as Bach provides deep sonorities. In the more mysterious Byzantium, set to compositions by VarM-hse, individual plight is set within mass movement, with ritualized sophistication pitted against primal brutishness.
Taylor, though, is just as expert at whipping up puff pastries of the most exquisite kind. The lilting Offenbach Overtures offers amusement in costume drama, with encounters among socialites fostering humor and mischief. How about a wobbling waltz or a duel in which 40 paces leads to a dalliance? High-end soap opera has never been so bubbly – or so operatic.
Guillermo Perez
INFORMATIONAL BOX:
If you go
The Paul Taylor Dance Company performs today at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. $35-$120; 305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org
