The Dance that Launched a Golden Age
When it premiered in 1962, Paul Taylor’s Aureole surprised critics, delighted audiences and advanced, by a quantum leap, America’s indigenous art of modern dance. Eight years after he burst upon the scene in 1954 as a virtuoso dancer and choreographer, Paul Taylor stood at the forefront of the avant garde. Dubbed “the naughty boy of modern dance” by Martha Graham, he had on more than one occasion alienated his audiences with experiments in movement – or non-movement. For his 30th dance, the young iconoclast turned not to a contemporary, atonal composer as most of his peers were doing, but to George Frideric Handel, dead more than two centuries. What emerged from the Paris studio where Taylor began the work, and the New York studio where he finished it, was a lyrical, light-hearted dance with hints of romance and a brilliant male solo that emphasized the dance maker’s own virile grace. His title, Aureole – the luminous area surrounding a bright light when seen through mist – proved especially apt. Aureole announced the arrival of a new kind of modern dance: at once light, romantic, athletic, playful and profound. It went on to be performed by generations of Taylor dancers as well as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. And in 1968 it became the first of many Taylor works to be acquired by leading ballet companies all over the world, thereby becoming the first great work to bridge the worlds of ballet and American modern dance. Join us in celebrating the dance that launched a Golden Age during its 50th Anniversary season.