Word: grahams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Paul Taylor burst upon the dance world in 1957, but not quite in the way he had hoped. At 27 he was a member of Martha Graham's troupe and already experimenting on his own. Specifically he was trying to strip away the "dancerly" elements in the modern style, to get down to the basics. He and his hardworking group of three performed the results at the YM-YWHA in Manhattan, and a few weeks later Louis Horst in the influential Dance Observer weighed in with the definitive review: four inches of blank space followed by the author's initials...
There have been several dance autobiographies recently, many of them extolling or punishing George Balanchine along the way, but none is as intelligent or funny or shrewd as this one. Taylor's insights on fellow artists -- Graham, Balanchine, Robert Rauschenberg -- are unusually trenchant and fresh. The book is blessedly free of the cleaned-up quality that such memoirs often have, which inevitably makes the childhood chapters the only interesting, trustworthy ones. Talk about warts and all! For readers who want to hear about pressures and strains on the professional dancer -- the drugs, the drink, the penury -- they are all here...
...dancer -- not any old dancer, but one of the best." The flash was tardy; college is dangerously late to start serious dance training. But Taylor worked on technique, pushing his "instrument" -- as modern dancers like to call their bodies -- ruthlessly, and he was soon studying with the likes of Graham and Jose Limon. Graham became a powerful influence. Much to Taylor's approval, she called her instrument the "bodaah," and he was transfixed by her witchy pronouncements and "oracular eyes...
From Balanchine to Merce Cunningham, choreographers invited Taylor to join their groups. For six years he danced mostly with Graham but in 1961 went on his own for good. A foe of ballet's artifice, he was inspired by the city's population: "They are standing, squatting, sitting everywhere like marvelous ants or bees, and their moves and stillnesses are ABCs that if given a proper format could define dance in a new way." Now his privations really began, and he records them with deep feeling and baleful gusto. Home was usually a wretched flat, cold water or no water...
...good mid-winter game" Butcher and Monson name their dog pups, she says. Often they name the dogs according to themes: Cracker's pups are called Ritz and Graham, and Gingerbread's pups have spice names. "Then we'll do books--shogun..." Butcher muses...