Giving New Life To Taylor's Gripping Work

Paul Taylor had a little fun with us Thursday night, but there's not much new about that. What was new was his decision to open his company's City Center season with a revival of his 1984 "Byzantium," which the troupe hadn't performed since 1986. Mr. Taylor seems to have cast this revival with dancers bearing an uncanny resemblance to members of the original cast. Mr. Taylor does tend to be drawn to the same facial and physical typologies, but here it almost felt as if he were trying to blur our memories of the original production. The work's original performers, however, were too striking to be blurred. And while Thursday's cast seemed to be just breaking in this long-absent dance, "Byzantium" is too gripping to be performed this infrequently.

"Byzantium" represents both today and a very distant yesterday; a disordered and disturbed populace elects leaders who are physically and psychically stunted. Religious and political ruling classes are deconstructed. Corrupt priests pull strings and pass judgment. Citadels are stormed, tablets shattered, and apostate rulers struck from the historical record.

"Byzantium" is performed to selections by Edgard Varèse that serve Mr. Taylor's purposes by evoking equally the cacophony of a tumultuous rabble and the lone flute echoing down secret chambers and passageways in which mystery religions hold forth.

Between the 1984 premiere and the work's last performance in 1986, Mr. Taylor shuffled some of the casting and made changes to this piece that did little to enhance it. It's still a bit on the diffuse and inconclusive side, but it is so compelling that it makes complete cogency seem trite.

On Thursday night the cast members were fine; Mr. Taylor does not tolerate anything less than complete commitment. But they were not as edgy and vivid as the original cast. In the role danced originally by David Parsons, James Samson got things off to a fine, if discontented start with his restless and relentlessly off-balance, double-jointed, swiveling relevés.

Following "Byzantium," Thursday night's opening saw the New York premiere of Mr. Taylor's "De Sueños," which received its world premiere last year at the American Dance Festival. To an electric sheaf of Latin-sounding tracks, Mr. Taylor makes a suite of dreamworthy episodes and encounters. He's done this before, of course, and he was again able to conjure a distinct microcosm of symbolism and enigma. Skull props speak not only of days of the dead in Spanish-speaking cultures but of dances of death and painterly iconography of the Renaissance; there is a historical undercurrent to much of Mr. Taylor's work.

Mr. Taylor and designer Santo Loquasto have devised an improbable jumble that could only be found in oneiric conjunction. As always, Mr. Taylor glances fitfully in a rearview mirror of dance history and explores his own place in it. Michael Trusnovec's antler headdress recalls the Minotaur figure in Martha Graham's "Errand into the Maze," and thus Mr. Taylor's early stardom in her company.

The use of scrims here allows depth of field to suggest the way disparate time frames and spatial juxtapositions can exist in dreams. Twin polarities of good and evil are symbolized by Richard Chen See, a ghoulish death figure dapper in bowler hat, and a woman , Laura Halzack, costumed like the Sea Princess in "Sadko," who dances a difficult solo adagio. Malign and benevolent position themselves to construct significant borders framing the stage action, or they, together with the balance of the ensemble, participate in the cosmic dance. Then there are colloquial inhabitants, who do things like flip the bird and bounce around in transvestite regalia.

The evening closed with Mr. Taylor's "Arden Court." Unlike "Byzantium," it's never been out of the repertory for long since it was first performed in 1981.

It may not be the best Taylor work, but it always sends an audience home happy by virtue of the men's semi-acrobatic horseplay, performed to Baroque music, that never fails to please. So even not-best Taylor remains much more than good enough.

Until March 16 (West 55th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-581-1212).