Paul Taylor Dance by Jack Mitchell

This month, the Paul Taylor Dance Company is presenting a series of dances at Lincoln Center under the artistic direction of Michael Novak. This series includes two world premieres by resident choreographer Lauren Lovette, a world premiere by Robert Battle, and ten dances by founder Paul Taylor. To mark the occasion, GME presents a series of photographs of Taylor's dance company taken by Jack Mitchell, spanning the 1960s to the mid-1990s.

Taylor came to dance relatively late. He initially enrolled at Syracuse University on a swimming scholarship, and studied painting. This combination of athleticism and visual art spurred an interest in movement as a means of expression, which eventually led Taylor to Juilliard. He graduated in 1953 with a B.S. in dance, and a year later he formed the Paul Taylor Dance Company, which has been performing uninterrupted for the past 70 years.

While forming his company, Taylor simultaneously danced under the tutelage of Martha Graham and George Balanchine. He was also a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which led to collaborations with Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In addition to working with cutting-edge visual artists, Taylor collaborated with avant-garde composer John Cage to choreograph pieces that stretched and reimagined the very definition of the word “dance.” His departure from modern dance conventions compelled Graham to dub him the art form's “naughty boy.” Taylor's approach — once described as his “contradictory originality” — was paradoxical. His work challenged and even subverted traditional dance customs while simultaneously appealing to mass audiences. Often his dances were imbued with an array of disparate themes, from slapstick comedy to the ravages of war, and dealt with profound issues such as spirituality, sexuality, and mortality.

By 1974, he retired from dancing while continuing to choreograph original pieces for his company. As noted in the New York Times: “In these years, he was deepening his skill in making classical constructions of pure dance, in blending comedy with darkness, and in showing the complexity of his imagination.”

The above photographs by Jack Mitchell elucidate that “complexity of imagination,” capturing Taylor and his troupe of dancers in movements and expressions that range from the lyrical to the whimsical to the surreal. These images so effectively convey Taylor's idiosyncratic magnetism that one of Mitchell's portraits of the choreographer, performing in “Aureole” (1963), has served as the basis for the Paul Taylor Dance Company's official logo for many decades.

Over the course of his half century professional career, photographer Jack Mitchell chronicled a unique history of creators in the fields of dance, theatre, music, the fine arts, film, and television. The Estate of Jack Mitchell is exclusively represented by Gartenberg Media Enterprises, Inc. for placement of the archive and exhibition of his work. Please contact GME's Fine Arts Curator, David Deitch, at david@gartenbergmedia.com for inquiries related to the Mitchell photography collection.