For the primary time in its 71-year historical past, the Paul Taylor Dance Firm has two resident choreographers, and each will current world premieres throughout the firm’s Lincoln Middle season (November 4-23). Whereas they arrive from very completely different worlds—Lauren Lovette is a former principal dancer with New York Metropolis Ballet (NYCB), and Robert Battle carried out with the athletic, up to date Parsons Dance earlier than founding his personal Battleworks Dance Firm and later serving as creative director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 12 years—they each signify a side of Paul Taylor’s (1930-2018) distinct aesthetic.
“I don’t suppose it may be underestimated how a lot Balanchine influenced Paul,” Taylor’s creative director Michael Novak advised Observer. George Balanchine invited Taylor to be a visitor artist with NYCB when he was a member of Martha Graham’s firm and even created a solo for him in Episodes (1959). And whereas Balanchine made neoclassical ballets and Taylor made trendy dances, each choreographers shared a deep reverence for music. Balanchine at all times listed the composer earlier than the choreographer in his program copy, and Taylor adopted swimsuit. “Lauren represents that lineage when it comes to her craft and musicality,” Novak mentioned, “and breaking down conventions of what a kind is anticipated to provide. By way of Balanchine, she understands Paul intuitively.” He was drawn to this side of her choreography when he employed her as the corporate’s first resident choreographer in 2022. “And,” he added with a smile, “there’s a rebellious aspect to her that has at all times fascinated me.”
Battle comes by the Taylor lineage extra immediately. Although he by no means danced within the firm, his mentors Carolyn Adams and David Parsons have been each former Taylor principal dancers. When Battle introduced a Taylor work to Ailey, he was in a position to meet Taylor and discuss with him. “Paul appreciated Robert,” Novak mentioned. “So there was a relationship there.” Battle, who got here in as resident choreographer in 2025, additionally brings a physicality and sensibility just like Taylor’s.
“Mixed,” Novak mentioned, “they’re an unbelievable intersection of Paul’s journey as a choreographer.” Lovette’s and Battle’s new works, which each premiere on November 11, are strikingly completely different, but share overlapping themes: trying to the previous with a view to look inward, self-acceptance and—similar to Taylor and Balanchine earlier than them—a reverence for music.
Lauren Lovette’s stim
Lovette’s stim, her seventh work for the corporate, is ready to John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries and impressed by her expertise with ADHD. “I’ve fairly intense ADHD,” Lovette advised Observer. “I’ve at all times identified that about myself and felt that it was a adverse factor, one thing to be pissed off by. However now I understand, particularly after making this piece, that it’s really a extremely cool factor. It’s what helps me do what I do.” Lovette made stim in solely 4 weeks—the shortest time she’s ever needed to create a piece—throughout a interval of main private transition. She moved upstate and gave delivery to her daughter within the midst of the method and realized she may thrive underneath strain. “I used to be tremendous targeted. Now that I can step again and see it, I really like this piece and suppose it’s not one thing I may have come to if I have been within the different half of my mind, or attempting to simply line all the pieces up completely. It needed to come sporadically, in items.”
The work for seven dancers bows to its intense rating. Lovette danced to the identical music in Peter Martins’s Fearful Symmetries (1988) whereas within the corps at NYCB, and—though that work used to present her stress nightmares—she needed to create a contemporary tackle it. “The music is ideal as a result of it has this actually rapid-paced, relentless, anxious rating and I needed to discover nervousness. I needed one thing with a excessive breath as a result of that’s how I’ve been feeling currently, and what I’m seeing on the planet proper now.” The rating is certainly relentless and sophisticated. Lovette channels that power in her choreography, layering solos, duets, trios and quartets with out pause. “They only constantly dance,” she defined. “Every dancer will go very laborious for a minute or two after which go off stage and breathe for 30 seconds, then come again out. So it’s a marathon piece, nevertheless it simply suits. Everyone will get simply sufficient relaxation to get by way of it.”
Like Balanchine and Taylor, Lovette is fascinated by musical element. “They do a variety of tough little strikes in small quantities of time. I take pleasure in listening to every little observe, discovering an underlying phrase, after which bringing that to life by way of motion. And there’s additionally a variety of operating. I feel if I needed to dance it,” she laughed, “I might complain.”
The inventive course of was eye-opening for Lovette. Regardless of her bodily and psychological load—or maybe due to it—she completed the work in file time. “I wasn’t in a position to doubt myself. I couldn’t nitpick. As an alternative of attempting to silence all of the concepts that pop into my head each ten seconds, I simply let go of attempting to regulate issues and used them. I let the dancers carry themselves into the piece, and I’m so proud of the outcome.”
Robert Battle’s Beneath the Rhythm of Jazz
Battle’s Beneath the Rhythm of Jazz—his first work for the corporate—options 15 dancers and is ready to a sequence of jazz, gospel and swing songs by Wycliffe Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, and Steve Reich. It’s impressed by the lady who raised him, a creative and vibrant determine who launched Battle to poetry, jazz and the significance of neighborhood.
“I didn’t begin out pondering I used to be doing an ode to my mother and her affect on my life,” Battle advised Observer, “however as I used to be selecting the music, it simply type of got here out that manner… All of it ties again to my youth and to her profound affect on me—not simply as an individual, however as an artist.”
One part particularly brings their relationship into sharper focus. It’s set to Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, overlaid by a poem. “I used to be going to recite it and file it, however I used to be at my mother’s home in Miami, and I used to be telling her in regards to the poem, and she or he took the piece of paper and began studying it. I used to be like, oh my goodness, it needs to be her! And so that you hear her voice, and mine beneath, reciting this poem. It’s our first collaboration collectively.”
Whereas Battle’s motion model stays highly effective and glossy, its tone has developed. “I feel I’m much less afraid to be private on this work than I’ve been prior to now. I’m feeling like, on this subsequent section of my profession, I don’t have to cover my true voice or disguise it, or be powerful or be no matter. Simply say what you must say. Let it come from the center. Alvin Ailey mentioned among the best artistic endeavors are these which can be probably the most private. And that basically resonates with me now at this level in my life.”
There’s vulnerability within the work—and pleasure too. “My mother was at all times joyous,” he mentioned. “She lived by way of much more than now we have—segregation, racism, bigotry—however there was at all times laughter, at all times comedy, at all times a way of pleasure. And I needed to the touch on that as a type of resistance. In some ways, this work is a celebration of issues that I’ve discovered observing her through the years.”
For Battle, choreographing for the corporate felt like a homecoming. “[Taylor has] been in my orbit all through my dance profession, and now it feels greater than serendipitous that I’m changing into part of the legacy.” He additionally appreciated attending to know the dancers extra deeply. “I can’t say sufficient about how wonderful they’re as artists and the way fantastic they’re to work with. I feel generally individuals suppose that’s an apparent factor, nevertheless it at all times must be mentioned as a result of they’re the bodily manifestation of the legacy.”
Different works this season
Together with the 2 world premieres, the corporate will carry out a spread of Taylor classics: Scudorama (1963), Esplanade (1975), Diggity (1978), Sundown (1983), Firm B (1991), Offenbach Overtures (1995), Cascade (1999), Troilus and Cressida (diminished) (2006), Beloved Renegade (2008), Gossamer Gallants (2011) and Concertiana (2018). A spotlight is the revival of Talking in Tongues (1988), final carried out in 2013, a piece about American spiritual extremism that earned an Emmy Award for its tv broadcast. Most items might be carried out to stay music by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Additionally on the season are the return of Lovette’s Solitaire (2022) and Jody Sperling’s Vive La Loïe! (2024), the corporate premiere of Battle’s Takademe (1999) and the New York premiere of Hope Boykin’s How Love Sounds (2025).
“We took on a variety of Taylor’s comedic items this season,” Novak mentioned, “which was intentional. I wanted it, and the corporate wanted it. There’s one thing about comedy that’s so highly effective for morale. It’s good for us, and the audiences, too.” Talking in Tongues and Beloved Renegade are heavier works that discover religion in contrasting methods, however the majority of the items are heartwarming. “It’s an emotionally beneficiant, heat repertory for probably the most half, and we are able to’t wait to share it.”
Paul Taylor Dance Firm is on the David H. Koch Theater for its Lincoln Middle Season by way of November 23, 2025.
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