BY DANNY McCARTHY
- I’m tailoring my thoughts after “Reviewing the Situation” –
– I contacted the Paul Taylor Dance Company informing a rep that I was composing an item about their beloved master and that I was hoping to receive possible jpg copy attachments from “the-powers-that-be” to add to my article.
In doing research re: PAUL TAYLOR – the information located was within various online PAUL TAYLOR obituary copy.
I NEVER HEARD BACK – So FOLKS – I THOUGHT TO GO WRITE-ON AHEAD AND GIVE AN UPDATE THAT JUST MIGHT SURPRISE YOU.
The December 19, 2004 online NPR item by Jennifer Ludden titled A Dance Legend Who Still Finds New Directions – “In fact, Taylor lives in Manhattan when he's creating new works. But he often prefers his retreat in Mattituck, Long Island, where he can explore his fascination with nature -- and insects.
NPR's Jennifer Ludden {visited}Taylor at home, finding no shortage of items to discuss, from his love for bugs to his group's next project.”
The DOMAIN column featured in The New York Times dated October 15, 2009 by Edward Lewine included answers by Paul Taylor to Edward Lewine.
{Number} “10. How he bought his home: When the agent showed it to me, I couldn’t believe I could afford it, because it was on the beach. It was in the 1960s, and the owner was a numerologist and was looking for someone whose numbers matches his; we matched. The price was $89,000, which was based on the first two of our numbers.
{Number} “32. Talking stairway: Between the steps, on the risers, up the stairway to my bedroom are signs that were used in a dance. I made a sentence out of them that you read as you go up. It reads, ‘By and By; Going Home; To Sing a Song of Joy; Be With My Lord; Transgress.’”
The New York Times dated {Thursday}August 30, 2018 by Alastair Macaulay carried the sad news that “Paul Taylor, who brought a lyrical musicality, capacity for joy and wide poetic imagination to modern dance over six decades as one of its greatest choreographers, died on Wednesday in a Manhattan hospital. He was 88.”
According to The New York Times article dated September 4, 2018 by Gia Kourias:
“Dreaming was something [Paul Taylor} could do in Mattituck, where he owned an idyllic cottage on a cliff. Its living room overlooked the water, which, like one of Mr. Taylor’s dances, could create a dizzying multitude of sensations: tranquil, majestic, treacherous. When he described visiting the property in the 1970s for the first time, he said he didn’t so much as glance at the house, but headed down to the water and looked up and down the beach. He called it Robinson Crusoe land. The man who sold it to him, he said, did so because their astrology charts were in alignment.
A friend pointed out that you can’t mourn a man like Mr. Taylor because he left so much great work behind. You can miss him, though. The dances are one thing. His stories, like shared secrets, were glimpses of his mind; so were the art projects he did on the side. His Mattituck house was filled with them: handmade frames with mounted butterflies, crushed cans and footprints and handprints embellished with squashed bugs. I noted that in one you could still see all the bug’s guts. He gave me a wide-eyed “Yeah?” but looked immensely pleased.
My favorite of those art projects was one he called James, and described as “a trained circus mouse going through a hoop.” It was actually a petrified mouse jumping through a bracelet. He had found the mouse in the basement, “dead and frozen,” he said. “I didn’t have to stuff it or anything, it was, like, dry.”
The Sunday, September 2, 2018 The Guardian article by Angela Kane -
“Taylor was a creative polymath. Close friends treasured the objets trouves gifts he made for them from driftwood, seashells and items washed ashore near his second home on a bluff on Long Island.”
The Washington Post dated August 30, 2018 by Sarah Kaufman -
“In his later years, when not creating a new work, Mr. Taylor spent most of his time at the gray-shingled cottage in Mattituck, on Long Island, that he bought in the 1970s. If his company needed him, he stayed within walking distance of the troupe’s headquarters, for many years in Soho and since 2008 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.”
Here is something that is definitely “not-that-far-from-missing-link” regarding the Paul Taylor Dance Company website:
http://www.ptamd.org/
AND - I DID REMEMBER - TO PLACE THE LINK CARRYING THE PAUL TAYLOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY TITLED "Private Domain" BEING AVAILABLE FROM amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/Private...
