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The Paul Taylor Dance Company will bring its world-renowned repertoire to Lafayette’s Williams Center for the Arts 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 8.
Tickets are $25 for the public and can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009. The performance will be preceded by a 7 p.m. educational talk about the company and the evening’s program, hosted by Williams Center director Ellis Finger and Paul Taylor Company executive director John Tomlinson. This will be held in room 108 of the Williams Center.
The company’s performance will include Troilus and Cressida (abridged) based on the comedy by Shakespeare and the post-9/11 work Promethean Fire, set to the music of Bach. The program will also feature 1962’s Aureole, set to the music of Handel, and Lines of Loss, created in 2006 to music by Kronos.
The performance is a part of the company’s American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius tour. It is a major initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and is supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. As part of this state-wide project, Lafayette will also be hosting the younger Taylor 2 Company for a community residency April 1 and 2. These dancers will be giving school performances at Forks and Palmer elementary schools in Easton, master classes for the dance students at the Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Performing Arts in Bethlehem, and teaching the dancers of Repertory Dance Theater in Allentown. This residency is supported by a grant from the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation.
Paul Taylor first presented his choreography on May 30, 1954 in Manhattan. Since then, Taylor has become one of the world’s most celebrated choreographers. His two dance companies, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Taylor 2, perform around the world. His choreography once deemed experimental and avant-garde, quickly took its place at the forefront of modern dance. Taylor has received numerous awards from both the United States and France. He has created over 125 dances.
The Paul Taylor Dance Company has performed Taylor’s works in more than 500 cities in 62 countries. It has represented the United States at arts festivals in more than 40 countries and has toured extensively sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Despite extensive traveling, the dance company performs more than half of each touring season in cities throughout the United States.
Beginning with its first television appearance for the Dance in America series in 1978, the company has appeared on PBS in nine different programs, including the 1991 Emmy Award-winning Speaking in Tongues and The Wrecker’s Ball which was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1997. In 1999, the PBS American Masters series aired Dancemaker, the Academy Award-nominated documentary about Taylor and his dance company.
The 2007-2008 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Fund, the Croasdale Fund, the Class of ’73 Fund, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.