Paul Taylor (choreographer)

Lore & Background

Taylor was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to Paul Belville Taylor Sr., a physicist, and Elizabeth Rust Pendleton. He grew up in and around Washington, DC. By his teens, he had grown to more than six feet in height. He attended Virginia Episcopal School and later studied painting and swam competitively at Syracuse University, where he received a swimming scholarship. Discovering dance through books at the school library, he created his first choreography, Hobo Ballet, on Syracuse University Dance department students. He then transferred to Juilliard, earning a B.S. His dedication to swimming and varied experiences were said to have taught him the commitment necessary for a successful dance career and allowed him to develop a unique and diverse dance aesthetic. He joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1955 for seven seasons as a soloist, creating the role of the evil Aegisthus in Graham's Clytemnestra, among other roles. He also worked with choreographers Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, José Limón, and Jerome Robbins. In 1959 he was invited by George Balanchine to be a guest artist with New York City Ballet. Taylor's early choreographic projects were noted as distinctly different from the modern, physical works he would later become known for, inviting comparison to the conceptual performances of the Judson Dance Theatre. Duet, part of Taylor's Seven New Dances concert, became his first claim to fame due to its controversial nature: during Duet, Taylor and dancer Toby Glanternik remained motionless as the pianist played Cage's non-score. The Dance Observer critic Louis Horst published a blank column as a review, after which Martha Graham called him a 'naughty boy.'

The turning point in Taylor's choreographic career came with the premiere of his plotless work Aureole (1962) at the American Dance Festival, which convinced him to leave the Graham company and pursue choreography full time. He became known for works such as Esplanade (1975), which explored everyday movements like running, sliding, walking, jumping, and falling, set to J.S. Bach's violin concertos. Other notable works include Private Domain (1969), which played with perspective and audience sightlines, and Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal) (1980), a detective story set to Stravinsky's score. Scholars identified a light/dark pattern in his choreography, with works like Aureole and Esplanade considered light, and Big Bertha and Last Look considered dark, though some argued his works could not be confined to two categories.

Reader's Guide

Paul Taylor's significance lies in his role as a central figure in American modern dance, bridging the third generation of modern dance artists and creating a vast body of work that ranged from avant-garde experiments to plotless, lyrical pieces. His early controversial works, such as Duet and Epic, challenged conventional dance expectations and aligned with the conceptual art of the 1960s. However, his later success with Aureole established a more accessible yet still innovative style that emphasized pedestrian movement and formal structure. Taylor's choreography often explored profound themes like war, piety, spirituality, sexuality, morality, and mortality, while also drawing on his fascination with insects and swimming. His collaborations with visual artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Alex Katz integrated visual art into dance. His career was documented in the Oscar-nominated film Dancemaker, and he authored the autobiography Private Domain.

Did You Know?

• Taylor created his first choreography, Hobo Ballet, on Syracuse University Dance department students after discovering dance through library books.
• Taylor's work Esplanade (1975) was inspired by everyday movements such as running, sliding, walking, jumping, and falling.

Roots in Water and Paint

Paul Belville Taylor Jr. entered the world on July 29, 1930, in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, the son of a physicist and a woman named Elizabeth Rust Pendleton. Raised in and around Washington, D.C., he attended Virginia Episcopal School before heading to Syracuse University in the late 1940s, where he studied painting and earned a swimming scholarship on the competitive swim team. By his teenage years he had already towered past six feet. It was not until he stumbled upon dance through books in the school library that his artistic trajectory shifted. He immediately put that discovery into practice, choreographing a piece called Hobo Ballet for students in Syracuse's dance department. He then transferred to Juilliard, earning a B.S. Observers have long credited his swimming discipline and his wide-ranging early experiences—painting, athletics, intellectual curiosity—with instilling the relentless commitment that would define his career and seeding the diverse physical vocabulary that became his signature aesthetic.

The Blank Column and the Naughty Boy

Central to the program was Duet, a piece in which Taylor and dancer Toby Glanternik stood completely still on stage while a pianist performed John Cage's non-score 4'33". The work was inspired by a series of white paintings by Robert Rauschenberg, with whom Taylor collaborated closely on several pieces including Three Epitaphs. On the same bill appeared Epic, in which Taylor shuffled slowly across the stage in a business suit while a recorded time announcement droned in the background. Martha Graham, with whom Taylor was then performing as a soloist, reportedly called him a naughty boy. These early conceptual works, distinctly different from the physical modern dance he would later master, have even drawn comparisons to the Judson Dance Theatre's experimental ethos of the 1960s.

Aureole and the Leap to Full-Time Choreography

The premiere of Aureole at the 1962 American Dance Festival marked the decisive turning point in Taylor's career. With Aureole, Taylor stepped away from the conceptual, movement-less aesthetic of his early years and embraced a physical, expressive modern vocabulary. Yet he never abandoned the idea that dance should be about something. His movements drew on a fascination with insects and their locomotion, on the fluidity of swimming, and on the sheer beauty of propelling bodies through space. More profoundly, he used his dancers to illuminate themes of war, piety, spirituality, sexuality, morality, and mortality, making subject matter as central to his practice as formal invention.

Everyday Motion and the Architecture of Seeing

Taylor's mature work is defined by an obsessive attention to the small, pedestrian gestures of daily life—running, sliding, walking, jumping, falling—and by a deep curiosity about how a single change in timing, position, or facing can transform an ordinary gesture into dance. Esplanade (1975), perhaps his most celebrated piece, is a five-section work set to movements from two of Bach's violin concertos, built around the everyday movements people enact without thinking. Polaris (1976) took this further by presenting two sections with identical choreography performed by two completely different casts, highlighting the nuances each body brings. In Private Domain (1969), Taylor explored perspective itself, commissioning rectangular panels from visual artist Alex Katz that blocked portions of the stage depending on where the audience sat, making the seen and unseen a central experience. His 1980 reimagining of The Rite of Spring, titled The Rehearsal, paired a two-piano Stravinsky score with a detective story involving gangsters and kidnappings, balanced by a scene in which a grieving mother echoes Nijinsky's Chosen Maiden.

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