Paul Taylor Dance Company.

CITY CENTER FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 9, 1997

My last Paul Taylor report on these pages, concerning the fall 1993 season, opened with the depressing news that the grand old boy of modern dance was reduced to presenting his grand new (and old) dances to canned music. This time I am pleased to announce that the canned music has been put back in the can, and a group of musicians called the New York Metamorphoses Orchestra has been put in City Center's pit. Except in cases where Taylor created his dances specifically to recorded music, all the season's music was performed live. If the playing was not always pristine, the music still sprang forth with a life in which even the rough edges had their charms.

Nowhere was this change more gratifying than in Offenbach Overtures (1995), Taylor's wickedly affectionate look at Russian ballet theater a la francaise. Every last bubble of Offenbach's froth inspires Taylor to pop it open and release its essential perfume and giddy energy. With live music, even the seemingly offhand exchange between a cocky Andrew Asnes and an innocent Thomas Patrick, as seconds to pussycat duelists Patrick Corbin and Richard Chen See, comes across as brilliantly detailed as a Daumier caricature.

This season Taylor withheld his most biting humor from his newest dances. More than a gloss of wit, however, animated Prime Numbers, premiered in New Delhi on January l0 to help celebrate India's fiftieth anniversary of independence. The music, Dance Suite for Solo Cello, was composed by David Israel, who also shared the season's conducting duties.

The printed program offers a dictionary definition of the title as it relates to math. Having no feel for such things, I focused on numbers as theatrical entities. I think Taylor did so as well. Each of seven musical segments, variously composed as dance forms (rag, waltz, pavane, and so on) gets performed by a prime number subsection of the eleven-member cast. Three solos, one duo, one quintet, and one septet prepare the way for a full-cast finale. Led off by the endearing and scrupulous Lisa Viola, Taylor's suite of numbers has an air of imagining what classical Indian dance might be like if it borrowed moves from Western minstrel shows and vaudeville. Santo Loquasto's handsome costumes consist of open, filmy, sleeveless tunics over the men's brightly colored harem pants and the women's unitards. Metallic-looking choker collars and ankle cuffs complete the Indian-costume pastiche.

Eventide (premiered on opening night) meets the eye as a mist. Its cast of five couples passes through a twilight, marvelously orchestrated by Jennifer Tipton's lighting, at oblique angles. The musical reverie is by Ralph Vaughan Williams (Suite for Viola and Orchestra and Hymn-Tune Prelude, No. 1); the pastel costumes and back-cloth by Loquasto--negligee-style dresses for the women, shirts and suspendered pants for the men, sloping terrain and leaning trees on the cyclorama. I thought of Tudor's Dark Elegies, divested of its tragic undercurrent. Corbin and Francie Huber are central to the fugitive drama their fellow couples may be no more than ghosts of their other selves.

Brandenburgs (1988), Dust (1977), and Polaris (1976) made up the season's prominent revivals. Each came to fresh life with Taylor's largely new and young company, performing with a maturity beyond its years. Brandenburgs hasn't been seen since the late Christopher Gillis led it. Asnes was given Gillis's central role. He shone in his inimitable way, but the innocent abandon with which Gillis slipped and twirled through Taylor's Bach-inspired labyrinth is not native to the authority of Asnes. Loquasto's new green velvet costumes are handsome but heavy, perhaps working to expunge the golden, airy aspects of the dance's former profile.