Feature Stories

Patrick Corbin on Choreographer Paul Taylor

Editor’s note: Paul Taylor was sequestered in rehearsal and unavailable for interviews, so we asked former Paul Taylor Dance Company member Patrick Corbin, who staged Spring Rounds, for some insights into Taylor’s choreographic process.

Backstage: Does Taylor talk about where his inspiration comes from?

Patrick Corbin (PC): That’s his pet-peeve question! I think it usually comes from the music and a visceral feeling he gets from it, and then from there his intellectual properties take over and he starts forming the structure in his head. Normally his inspiration comes from the music. Nature is also a big element, and art, and of course dances—social dances. And human relationships—they’re in all of his dances. Relationships are what make Paul the universally understood choreographer that he is—he’s successful because everybody walks, everybody falls in love, everybody has conflicts, everybody lives in a community. He’s always trying to build that community, these little worlds, in his dances.

Backstage: How would you describe his creative process?

PC: He likes to get the outline done—he tries to move it along so it doesn’t get bogged down. But we work on details of gesture quite specifically in the process. We work on the motifs and themes to try to build a basis or a language for each dance; he’s very specific about those. But he lets things happen—he allows the dancers to have input, and then there’s whatever mood he’s in that day. He’ll get a rough sketch done and then we’ll go back and clean and codify each thing. Dancers might have different approaches, so then you have to codify. He’ll go back and say, “Not everybody’s arms are the same—does that matter? Do I want them the same?”

Usually his sketch is pretty much a finished product; then we’ll go back and become detail oriented. But that also changes from dance to dance. The more simple and gestural it is, the more specific he is from the get-go. Gesture is the hardest thing, and comedy. If it’s a funny piece we work and work and work on the timing, the schtick.

Almost always, if the process is seamless and quick, the dance forms itself. It takes on a life of its own quickly, and everybody can ride on that. But Paul comes in very prepared, and that always speeds up the process.

Backstage: Does he talk much about the feelings in his works?

PC: Yes. But even though he’s specific with his dancers when he’s building a dance, he thinks any reactions to it are valid. Paul leaves things open to interpretation. When people ask him what his dances are about, he always says, “What do you think?” Many people think that’s a cop-out, but he doesn’t want to impose that—that’ll kill a dance.

Backstage: Some choreographers say that the feelings are all there, in the movement or the music.

PC: Paul doesn’t subscribe to that, and I think that comes from his training with [Antony] Tudor and [Martha] Graham, because they were all about the visceral aspect and the relationships. Paul says that Martha would tell stories for the first couple of hours of rehearsal, and it was almost like an acting class. So he departed a little bit from that, adding more movement and incorporating more balletic and jazz elements into it, but that influence is still where he comes from. He appreciates when people are just structure and movement driven, but it’s not his cup of tea.

Image above: Patrick Corbin rehearses Taylor's Spring Rounds (© Erik Tomasson).