Photo by Paul B. Goode
In a happy coincidence, while the Paul Taylor Dance Company is performing at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the dancers can also be seen on the PBS Great Performances series.
Relegated in the Bay Area to KQED-TV's usual out-in-the-cold time period, telecasts are scheduled for Sunday at noon on May 5, (ch. 9), and then on KQED Life (the former KTEH), Monday at 2 a.m. All this, while some normal evening viewing hours are taken up by repeats of mediocre programs.
The program consists of two works recorded last year at the Theatre National de Chaillot at the Festival Les Etes de la Danse: Brandenburgs, to the Bach concertos No. 3 and No. 6; and Beloved Renegade, set to the Poulenc Gloria, and inspired by the life and work of Walt Whitman.
Scenes in the work from Whitman’s life include watching youngsters at play, and tending to the afflicted just as the poet nursed wounded soldiers during the Civil War. After his own mortality is foretold, the poet bids farewell to those who love him. He is then embraced by a benevolent feminine spirit with "the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death."
Clement Crisp in The Financial Times called Beloved Renegade an "astonishment," praising lead dancer Michael Trusnovec for "a performance of noblest clarity" and noting "the magnificence of the company’s dancing."