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Paul Taylor's golden age: as the Paul Taylor company reaches its 50th season, the choreographer's innovative work has earned a place among the classics.

Article Excerpt
AN APT METAPHOR for celebrating the Paul Tailor Dance Company's fiftieth-anniversary season this March is an image of Taylor as a swimmer, which he was at Syracuse University in the late 1940s. As a choreographer he also plunged into deep water and often struggled to keep his head above it, but he never went under, and eventually he won the equivalent of the gold medal time and time again. The company that bears his name reflects the same endurance and adaptability as its founder.

Gold in any form was in particularly short supply during the company's early years. Charles Reinhart, the Taylor Company's first manager, now president of the American Dance Festival, recalls, "Paul at one time was living in the back of the studio. It didn't even have a shower, but that didn't stop him. Nothing stopped him.

"Once I remember he emptied the sand out of the fire bucket at the shabby old walk-up because he needed a pot to make a stew. He always made do with what was at hand."

Taylor began studying modern dance at Syracuse and, after moving to New York City in 1952, continued under such pioneers as Doris Humphrey, Jose Limon, and Merce Cunningham, for whom he danced in 1953-1954; he...

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