Taylor 2 turns 5.

NEW YORK CITY--Taylor 2, Paul Taylor's very active and peripatetic second company, is marking its fifth anniversary and also welcoming a new director. Mary Cochran, who danced with the main company from 1985 to 1996, took over in May, following Linda Hodes, who has nurtured and guided the six-member troupe from its earliest beginnings through its initial half-decade.

Cochran, who has kept quite busy teaching and choreographing, as well as staging Taylor works, welcomed the new challenge enthusiastically. Shortly after arriving in the Bay Area last fall to start a year as visiting assistant professor of dance at Mills College, she received a surprising call from her former boss, offering her the job. "I'd been happy during the past year and a half, going ahead with my transition, but I hardly hesitated at all," she related by phone from San Francisco. "I have such a feeling about Paul and his work. After being out of the company and looking at his dances from a different perspective, I have even more appreciation for them. Ever since I was twelve years old, I've felt so connected to his work.

"I had the chance to set Esplanade at the North Carolina School of the Arts and at the University of Michigan," Cochran continues, "and I've seen how dancers respond to his style, how far they come through that process. It was incredible to get inside every detail, the essence of that dance, and then to see the experience those students had through doing it."

As Taylor 2's director, Cochran will be involved in staging and rehearsing the repertory--smaller-scale works and reductions of larger works from the Taylor oeuvre. Given the second company's dual focus on performance and education/outreach, her job will be particularly multifaceted. "In addition to keeping the dancers fresh and inspired, I'll be organizing the classes, teaching, and really working on the whole pedagogical aspect of Taylor 2, thinking about new things to try in terms of teaching elementary school kids or different types of populations. I'm also helping with booking, speaking to sponsors and presenters--just brainstorming about what they would like, and what we can do for them."

Taylor himself makes the decisions about the second company's repertory, but Cochran looks forward to having input, "There are some specific projects that have already come up, and since I know the rep, I've had some ideas about what kind of dances would work. Because some of the older works had smaller casts, they might be perfect. The most important thing is to make sure their rep is varied and appealing, and appropriate for all the different situations they encounter. If the revival of an old work fits that bill and Paul approves it, then that would be very exciting."

Hodes--who danced alongside Taylor in Martha Graham's company before joining his company in the 1960s, later serving for many years as the Graham troupe's associate artistic director--recalls the earliest glimmerings of what has become a thriving enterprise over the past five years. "I had dinner with Paul at the 1992 American Dance Festival, and he mentioned that he had a lot of requests that the big company couldn't meet, and he was thinking of starting a second company. Everybody thought he was a little crazy, since companies were folding right and left at that time, but he was absolutely right. We discussed the pros and cons and let it evolve.

"It has far exceeded my expectations, It really has amazed me, what the company has accomplished in five years," Hodes states proudly. "The dancers have learned and grown so much. We have a phenomenal amount of work for a dance company these days, and we keep getting work." She recalled last fall's Alaska tour, where Taylor 2's residencies and performances brought dance to people in small towns who had never been exposed to any. This is the essence of its mission, as described with Star Trekkian echoes in the Taylor newsletter in 1993: "To boldly take Taylor works where they've never been seen before, so that the company's audience can continue to grow."

Thanks to its small size, flexibility in programming, and willingness to adapt to all kinds of performance situations, Taylor 2 has expanded that audience to include a wide variety of locations worldwide. In March 1994, its first overseas tour, sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency, took it to six African countries, where its performance venues included amphitheaters with thatched roofs. Later travels included the Baltic countries and a tour of India in tandem with the main company.

Closer to home, Taylor 2 gives many performances in New York City schools, and has had extended residencies in Albany and Geneseo, New York. "Part of the company's focus is to be flexible enough to go into any situation and make it work," Cochran explains. "We may go to a theater or community that's never presented dance before, and make it easy for them. You can do both: appeal to people who aren't that dance-aware and also to people who know a lot about it.

"Another aspect is outreach, which can be very sophisticated or very elemental. There's so much to do! I'm studying educational psychology right now; I'm getting my B.A. from SUNY--Empire State, and I've been trying to choose courses that would help my teaching and make me better at what I'm going to be doing. I'm interested in developing our educational programs to fit different categories of people. It's a matter of linguistics; we need to be able to speak to educators and artists and young children of all ages--to try to focus and vary our educational activities, and to experiment a lot."

Cochran is particularly excited about the extensive, multiyear residency project in the San Francisco Bay Area that will involve both troupes in a variety of projects. The contacts she has made during her partial year at Mills will serve her well, as Taylor 2 will be working on a variety of fronts. She plans collaborations with such organizations as UC-Berkeley Extension, San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, and Back on Track, a program in the local schools.

"The art always comes first, but the educational aspect is extremely important," Cochran observes about her new position's multiple challenges. "`Education' sounds so dry; it's really inspiration and evangelism--introducing dance to people in ways that they find stimulating and aren't afraid of, that they can relate to, so that when they go to watch, they're really involved and participating in the experience and feel a connection to it."