Paul Taylor knows hell. Read his memoir, “Private Domain” — the guy has demons. His company’s show Tuesday night offered two sides of an infernal coin before ending on an optimistic note.
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell is other people, but Taylor’s 1963 “Scudorama” seems to say that it lies in ourselves. A program note quotes Dante on trapped souls, whose lives had “neither blame nor praise.”
Clarence Jackson’s recorded score sounds like a jazz version of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” interrupted now and then by police whistles. We first find the cast slumped on the floor, against a shadowy backdrop of dark, cartoonish clouds.
One man in a jacket and tie finally gets up, looking alarmed as he surveys the scene. The other dancers toss on the ground like dogs having running dreams. Another man enters with a woman curled round his head and shoulders like a hood. People jump in place obsessively and wind up in a pile of lost souls. It’s inscrutable and disturbing.
In “Lost, Found and Lost,” from 1982, Taylor sets hell in a Muzak-filled shopping mall. For the first time this season, the music is more effective because it’s recorded — loud, awful chestnuts such as “Moon River” in string arrangements that swell like boils.
The large group is in basic black warm-ups, with rhinestones in inappropriate spots — crotches and boobs — and sparkly net veils over their faces — low-rent high fashion.
There’s some dancing but more “found movement.” People stand on line or pose with their hips jutted and arms crossed — waiting. It’s life at its most pointless.
“Lost, Found and Lost” pairs well as the comic counterpart of “Scudorama,” and the cast restrains themselves from playing it only for laughs.
If we start in Hades, we end in the green oasis of 1988’s “Brandenburgs,” a comforting closer with a big, joyous finale. For this, a cast arrayed in shades of olive and dark green, Taylor does straightforward music visualization to the Bach, contrasting light, quick movement against grounded, weighty poses. Michael Trusnovec, the company’s senior dancer, dances a slow solo with restrained, quiet stillness that makes him seem like an observer in the midst of the action.
Still, Taylor’s done many great baroque dances, and this one looks like bits and pieces of the others. With him, disturbing originality says more than pleasant recycling.