LB Dance club travels to Portland

The audience buzzes with electricity, then hushes as the house goes dark. The music begins, the curtain rises and the lights come up on some of the world’s greatest dancers.

The stage was alive with sound and excitement. Live pianos were practicing in the orchestra pit, lights were dimming and flashing. The dancers on stage were stretching in all angles and positions, warming up to soft music or music of their own.

All is calm in the beginning. Even without a full audience the energy of the performers never cease. The company even on dress rehearsal night are still perfecting every little detail of a dance. Whether a dance move is on beat, or a leg is lifted higher.

When the dance ends the curtain rises, the dancers take their bows and a thousand people shower them with applause.

This is the magic of a Paul Taylor performance.

The LBCC Dance Club took a trip to Portland with ten members of the club to watch a once in a life time backstage performance spectacle.

“Paul Taylor was great it was a really great experience and it was fun to see a professional company,” said Tiffany Johnson, a LBCC dance club member.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company is a New York bases international performing, modern dance company. Paul Taylor is widely known for uncommon musicality and catholic taste, Taylor has set movement to music so memorably that for many people it is impossible to hear certain orchestral works and popular songs and not think of his dances.

Taylor has made 138 dances since 1954, many of which have attained iconic status. He has covered a wide range of topics, but recurring themes include life and death; the natural world and man’s place within it; love and sexuality in all gender combinations; and iconic moments in American history.

Elizabeth Pearce, the LBCC Dance Club adviser

 has seen the Paul Taylor Dance Company perform three times, but this was the first time to see them behind the scenes and see them rehearse.

“Seeing them in rehearsal you got to see individual personality and styles of dancers,” said Pearce, “it was really once in a life time experience even for someone who has seen them in performance before.”

Taylor has set works to an eclectic mix that includes Medieval masses, Renaissance dances, baroque concertos, classical symphonies, and scores by Debussy, Cage, Feldman, Ligeti and Pärt; Ragtime, Tango, Tin Pan Alley, Barbershop Quartets and The Mamas and The Papas; and telephone time announcements, loon calls, and laughter.

“I would have loved to have been on stage dancing with them,” said Johnson

The LBCC Dance Club was invited to come sit in on a dress rehearsal of dances that were to be performed by the group later in the weekend.

The dance company rehearsal three of several signature pieces choreographed by Paul Taylor himself including “Brandenburgs,” “The Uncommitted,” and Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal)” set to two piano version of Stravinsky score performed live by Jeffrey Payne and Susan Dewitt Smith.

“I like that they were very focused but they were also having fun at the same time,” said Courtney Davidson, another LBCC dance club member who attended the rehearsal.

“They knew how to turn it on and turn off, they knew when to have fun but also when to be serious,” said Davidson.

The performances were April 4-6 and were presented by White Bird in the Newmark Theater in Portland.

Paul Taylor himself was not going to present until April 6th of the award show, however the rehearsal director and Taylor's closet friend Bettie de Jong was present.

No doubt the lifetime achievement award being given to Taylor will be presented with love.