Paul Taylor was interviewed on three different occasions over the past few years by his biographer, Suzanne Carbonneau, as part of the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process Series. Below are his thoughts on some of the dances in the 2010-11 repertoire, culled from those discussions.
SC: You’ve covered every decade [of the 20th Century] in some form or other in your choreography. In Black Tuesday we’re in the Depression. Did you have to do any research to do this work?
Susanne Carbonneau: You first saw the Paul Taylor Company in 1964, near the very beginning of your writing career. Anna Kisselgoff: Isadora Duncan was my heroine when I was very small. If you can believe it, I had read a book about her when I started reading, and so it was the mother of modern dance who inspired me. For some reason I didn’t pay attention to her main principle, that ballet had spectacle and seduced children. My mother took me to Act II of Swan Lake at age four and I was seduced by the spectacle.
Angela Kane: I first read Clive Barnes’s reviews as a dance student in England in the 1970s, but in the last years I’ve been reading a range of his writing on Paul’s work for a forthcoming book of mine. Absolutely invaluable – particularly for getting a real picture of some of the early dances that have yet to be revived. Clive said he met Paul before he saw him dance. I’d like to tease him out on those first impressions of Paul Taylor. Clive Barnes: I’m not sure if I was introduced to him by Edwin Denby or Lincoln Kirstein. I think it was probably 1963.