The Lost Dances of Paul Taylor

If a creation isn’t performed for a agelong time, it starts to disappear. People’s memories of it fade, and videos tin beryllium confusing—choreographers’ notes, adjacent much so. In short, reconstructing aged dances isn’t easy. On the different hand, that process of rebuilding is inherently interesting. This is what the Paul Taylor Dance Company has been up to for the past fewer months, arsenic it revives 2 Taylor pieces from the nineteen-sixties, “Tablet” (1960) and “Churchyard” (1969), for its weeklong tally astatine the Joyce (June 17-22). “It took america 2 hours of probe for each infinitesimal of dance,” Michael Novak, the company’s archetypal person since Taylor’s decease successful 2018, said recently. “But, eventually, we figured it out.”

For the company, it’s an accidental arsenic well. The existent dancers enactment with those from a erstwhile era; they get to execute Taylor works that, though old, consciousness new, and the assemblage get to spot a enactment that they haven’t already seen galore times before. It’s a cleanable slate. Plus, these peculiar dances are afloat of curiosities. “Tablet” is simply a duet with a commedia-dell’arte feel. The dancers deterioration look overgarment and color-block unitards, designed by Ellsworth Kelly. They crook and twist, creating geometries with their bodies. Sometimes, arsenic they interaction dispassionately, they look similar a Cubist Adam and Eve.

“Churchyard,” a much analyzable piece, is 1 of Taylor’s explorations of mendacious piety and the unit and grotesquerie that prevarication beneath. The mounting is medieval—Taylor loved a play piece. It, too, contains a beauteous pas de deux. A antheral and a pistillate interaction tenderly, creating an representation of guiltless love; then, suddenly, she kicks him. This juxtaposition of man’s contrasting natures is an important done enactment successful Taylor’s work. “Churchyard” volition beryllium echoed astatine the Joyce by a much acquainted work, “Cloven Kingdom,” from 1976, successful which seemingly polite men and women successful ceremonial attire devolve into strange, threatening behaviors. Then, determination is “Esplanade,” acceptable to Bach. Turning 50 this year, it’s possibly Taylor’s sunniest, astir welcoming creation and surely 1 of his astir beloved. These days, it looks astir classical. What is new? What is old? “I’m obsessed with the conception of what’s timeless and timely,” says Novak. “When I spell backmost into the vault of Paul Taylor’s repertoire, I’m amazed astatine however avant-garde immoderate of the enactment is.”—Marina Harss

About Town

Off Broadway

Aishah Rahman’s colorism dream-play “Chiaroscuro,” directed for the National Black Theatre by abigail jean-baptiste, drifts betwixt states: world and surreality, droll satire and sincere despair. Passengers committee the mysterious S.S. Chiaroscuro for a “Chocolate Singles” cruise, lone to find the sole unit member—the trickster Paul Paul Legba (Paige Gilbert)—more funny successful divesting the Black couples of their obsession with airy tegument than successful returning them to port. In the 2nd hour, the amusement loses its consciousness of direction, but respective beardown performances inactive anchor the production: Gayle Samuels and Lance Coadie Williams bicker arsenic exes who miss their 2nd chance, and the forceful (and past heartbreaking) Ebony Marshall-Oliver plays a pistillate truthful bushed of whitening her tegument that she peels it close off.—Helen Shaw (National Black Theatre astatine the Flea; done June 22.)

TV

In the Prime bid “Overcompensating,” Benny—played by Benito Skinner, the show’s creator—checks a near-comical fig of boxes: valedictorian, shot player, homecoming king. He is besides a closeted cheery feline who craves the acceptance of consecutive dudes, and the amusement is astir the immense temptation to support up specified an act, adjacent arsenic the deficiency of authenticity becomes corrosive. Skinner is simply a peculiarly crisp satirist of the relentless policing of masculinity by different men. The unit to conform to accepted masculinity isn’t caller terrain—but the canon of queer tv is inactive slim capable that “Overcompensating” feels fresh. Though Benny and his crush, Miles (Rish Shah), marque eyes astatine each other, Benny’s relationship with his ostensible emotion interest, Carmen (Wally Baram), emerges arsenic the existent emotion story.—Inkoo Kang

Off Broadway

“Prosperous Fools,” adapted by the protean queer theatre-maker Taylor Mac from Molière’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” turns the hostility betwixt making creation and making wealth into an juncture for lampooning each involved, from artists and arts organizations to their mega-wealthy funders. A ballet choreographer who worries he’s a sellout (Mac, successful a semi-autobiographical role) is presenting his enactment astatine a gala honoring a affluent scumbag (Jason O’Connell) and a bleeding-heart philanthropist (Sierra Boggess, who someway charms you with her character’s insufferableness). The show’s direction, by Darko Tresnjak, matches the zaniness of the script; what keeps the chaotic thrust from going disconnected the rails is the earnestness underlying Mac’s satire, which turns a shrewd oculus connected the corrupting imaginable of wealth successful the arts, arsenic anyplace else.—Dan Stahl (Polonsky Shakespeare Center; done June 29.)

For more: From 2019, a study connected Mac’s sequel to Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus,” a play that reminded Mac of “Trump’s crudely menacing and unwittingly self-lampooning usage of comedy, which, Mac added, ‘isn’t that funny.’ ”

Art

In the creation corporate Open Group’s video installation “Repeat After Me II” (2022, 2024), refugees from the warfare successful Ukraine imitate the sounds of Russian weapons that haunt them—a striking pistillate with reddish lipstick and heavy bags nether her eyes vocalizes the “ssssssssssssss tuhfff tuhfff tuhfff”s of aerial bombs that astir killed her family. The task represented Poland astatine past year’s Venice Biennale, and there, arsenic here, the videos play successful a subject bunker-cum-karaoke barroom with reddish lighting, crates of bottled water, and microphones. Each talker ends by saying “Repeat aft me”—a operation that’s adjacent parts acquisition and exhortation to basal astatine a mike and marque the noises yourself. You whitethorn consciousness awkward, but that’s the point: doing truthful turns the witnessing of trauma into thing inescapably visceral.—Jillian Steinhauer (601Artspace; done June 22.)

Folk Rock

In the sixty years since helium débuted with Art Garfunkel, the singer-songwriter Paul Simon has shaped an undeniable vocation astir an ambivalent perspective. As fractional of Simon & Garfunkel and arsenic a soloist, helium has contributed importantly to American music. From “The Sounds of Silence” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” to “Graceland” and “You’re the One,” his storytelling is nuanced, moving done an uncertain satellite with ease. Simon’s astir caller album, “Seven Psalms,” from 2023, an acoustic opus cycle, feels purposefully built for his “Quiet Celebration” tour, intimate unrecorded shows successful venues selected for their dependable properties. But adjacent amid the quiescent helium volition ever find abstraction for the classics.—Sheldon Pearce (Beacon Theatre; prime dates June 16-23.)