PAUL TAYLOR ON-SCREEN AND ONSTAGE.

In March a new documentary and his company's New York season will cast light on the work of the renowned choreographer.

NEW YORK CITY--During an interview last winter on the top floor of his West Village apartment in Manhattan, Paul Taylor drank coffee with evaporated milk, chewed Freedent gum, and chain-smoked Vantage menthol cigarettes. This layer of toxins thinly disguised a regal body that in itself contains an entire history of American modern dance.

At 68, Taylor has danced with the likes of Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, and George Balanchine. The founder of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, he is also one of the world's most respected living choreographers.

But on this cool February day, Taylor was just a man. An anxious man, actually. Not about an upcoming performance or a difficult step, but about a reading of his autobiography, Private Domain, that he was scheduled to give that afternoon at Barnes & Noble. He was so anxious, in fact, that he asked if he could rehearse out loud.

Taylor's reading recalled the sentiment that Charles Reinhart, codirector of American Dance Festival and Taylor's first manager, expressed about the book. "It should have got first prize for autobiography and honorable mention for fiction," he chuckled. "He stretches it and combines things--it's just like one of his great dances."

Whether it's in writing, in choreography, or in person, Taylor maintains an impenetrable mystique. After hours of conversation, knowledge about him came not in the form of specific answers to questions, but from an overall impression. Even with his acute intelligence and amusing bawdiness, he remained an intriguing enigma.

This complexity comes across in a new documentary about Taylor that premiers at New York City's Film Forum this month. [See Moving Image, page 98.] With exceptional footage of Taylor's dances, interviews with current and former company members, and priceless quotes from Taylor himself, Dancemaker captures the brilliance, cynicism, and vulnerability of this legendary artist.

One of the things that Matthew Diamond, Dancemaker's producer and director, tried to capture in the film was the extraordinary range of human emotion explored in Taylor's work. "In any given year he will talk about the evil that lives in men's souls, then do a light dance, then something that speaks to love, something that speaks to lust--and then he'll do a comedy," said Diamond. "Just when I think I've identified something he hasn't dealt with, he goes and deals with it--and as well as anybody ever has."

Elucidating the dark and light side of humanity is something Taylor is known for, and something he demonstrates explicitly in the film. "I think many of us depend on fantasies of love ... [and] a kind of romantic notion about people," Taylor says when describing Eventide, a piece he choreographed in 1996. "Upstairs, perhaps we know that people are so awful that we don't want to have anything to do with them. And on the other hand, [we have] a kind of continued, ingrained, imprinted sense of romance and possible lover relationships."

The film's best treats are the black-and-white images of Taylor dancing onstage as a young man. "I can't believe I looked like that," said Taylor. "I wish I'd known when I was that age--I would have taken advantage of it." For Patrick Corbin, however, a company member for more than ten years, those old clips are less thrilling to watch. One scene that cuts back and forth between shots of Taylor dancing Aureole (one of his better-known works) in 1962, and Corbin doing the same steps in 1997, particularly unsettles him.

"He's one of the great dancers of the century, and it's his movement coming straight out of him--and then there's me," said Corbin. "I'm happy with the way it came out, but it kills me because he's all and everything. It's just something to strive for."

The film's debut coincides with the Paul Taylor Dance Company's 1999 City Center season, March 2 to 14, which will feature two New York premieres. The first, Oh, You Kid!, was commissioned by the Doris Duke Millennium Awards for Modern Dance and Jazz Music Collaborations. For it, Taylor chose World War I-era music, to be played live by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The choreography will incorporate popular moves from that time, including vaudeville, ballroom dance and the kangaroo hop. Corbin called the second New York premiere, Fiddlers Green, "sort of a post-modern hoe-down." It combines square dancing with 1990s romp and has a light, summertime flair.

Other dances to be performed this season include Piazzolla Caldera (1997), Taylor's steamy version of the tango; The Word (1998), which takes on the dangers of religious orthodoxy; and Cloven Kingdom (1976), a gentle mocking of humanity's attempt to deny our animal origins.

The upcoming City Center performances, like all of the company's live performances, are by far the best way to get to know Paul Taylor. Although his autobiography and the film provide insight into this tremendous thinker's philosophy and technique, nothing illuminates his true nature more than the choreography itself. Twisted and sassy and lovely all at the same time, the dances--like Paul Taylor himself--can only be understood through the inherently abstract and complicated nature of art.