Paul Taylor’s Esplanade, the dance of all dances

Esplanade (1975), containing not one academic dance step, often seems the dance of all dances. Set to Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major, followed by the final two movements of his Double Violin Concerto, it explores pedestrian movement - walking, running, halting, skidding, leaping, falling - in ways that feel dreamlike in their unbroken fluency and in the unpredictable sequence of their imagery. Irresistible as movement, Esplanade pours forth images that abound in meaning. A river of connected contrasts, it’s swept along on the music’s current. Stillness and movement, running and walking, joy and anguish, rushing forward and looking back, jumping high and falling splat; the group, the male-female couple, the loner; the man, the woman, the androgynous observing ghost; the embrace, the broken heart, the rush of the unstoppable moment, and the memory that pierces; the community of people for whom young-adult emotions are happening for the first time but who themselves are part of a larger design. Esplanade juxtaposes company with isolation, anguish with exuberance. Everything is very precisely choreographed; patterns predominate; but its impetus is breath-catching. This is the most endlessly rewatchable work Paul Taylor ever made, and among the most constantly heart-catching works ever made in any art form.

@Alastair Macaulay 2024