Paul Taylor: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Paul Taylor came out of Martha Graham's company and Juilliard's studios, then spent six decades building a repertory that swung between sunlit lyricism and dark American parable. This mix traces the modern-dance lineage he absorbed, the downtown experiments and painters who shaped his eye, and the dancers who left his company to make their own work.

The Kynda mix for Paul Taylor

• Key Influence · Appalachian Spring by Martha Graham (1944). Taylor joined Graham's company in 1955 and danced with her for seven years, originating roles including Aegisthus in Clytemnestra. Graham's technique — contraction and release, the torso as dramatic engine, myth and Americana as subject — is the ground Taylor built on and then argued with. His later narrative works, from Big Bertha to Last Look, apply Graham's theatrical gravity to a specifically American vernacular of gesture.
• Influencia Obscura · Dark Elegies by Antony Tudor (1937). Taylor studied at Juilliard when Tudor was on the faculty, and Tudor's psychological ballet — grief carried in the spine rather than mimed, set to Mahler's Kindertotenlieder — offers a model for Taylor's darker repertory. The restrained communal mourning of Dark Elegies anticipates the cortege gravity of works like Taylor's settings of requiem and wartime material, where formal ritual holds unbearable feeling.
• Local Roots · Summerspace by Merce Cunningham (1958). Taylor danced briefly with Cunningham in the mid-1950s in the same small New York milieu of lofts and church basements, sharing Rauschenberg as designer and the same downtown audience. Summerspace's pointillist Rauschenberg backdrop and its dancers dissolving into decor mark the aesthetic Taylor tested in 1957 and then rejected, making Cunningham the crucial local counter-example to Taylor's music-shaped lyricism.
• Beyond the Medium · Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (1721). Taylor built Esplanade on Bach violin concerto movements and Brandenburg on this set, treating Baroque architecture as a blueprint for human traffic — running, falling, sliding across the stage in strict contrapuntal order. His whole method depends on hearing structure in pre-existing scores rather than commissioning them, a habit that separated him sharply from Cunningham's chance-based indifference to music.
• Peer · Revelations by Alvin Ailey (1960). Ailey founded his company in 1958, two years after Taylor's, and the two ran parallel New York repertory troupes built on charismatic dancers, American musical sources and a mixed-bill format rather than avant-garde austerity. Both drew their vocabularies from Graham-derived technique while insisting on audience pleasure, and their companies toured the same State Department and festival circuits through the 1960s and 70s.
• From the Canon · Esplanade by Paul Taylor (1975). Reportedly sparked by the sight of a girl running for a bus, Esplanade is built almost entirely from walking, running, falling and sliding set to Bach violin concertos — no conventional dance steps. It is the clearest statement of Taylor's method: pedestrian movement organized by Baroque counterpoint until it becomes ecstatic, with a slow movement of family estrangement at its center.
• Key Collaborator · Bed by Robert Rauschenberg (1955). Rauschenberg designed sets and costumes for Taylor's early works, including the 1956 Three Epitaphs with its black head-to-toe body suits studded with mirror fragments, one of the most enduring visual images in American modern dance. The combine aesthetic — found materials, deadpan wit, junk transfigured — is exactly what Rauschenberg brought to the company in its scrappy loft years.
• Legacy · Caught by David Parsons (1982). Parsons was a principal dancer with Paul Taylor Dance Company for most of the 1980s before founding his own troupe, and Caught — a solo in which strobe flashes freeze the dancer permanently airborne — extracts Taylor's athletic buoyancy into a single spectacular idea. His repertory continues Taylor's commitment to muscular, audience-facing modern dance built on momentum and wit.

What influenced Paul Taylor

• 4′33″ by John Cage (1952). 4′33″ (John Cage) — ghost for Paul Taylor “Specifically, Rauschenberg's series of “white” paintings resulted in John Cage’s composition, 4’33”, for which Taylor’s piece Duet (1957), was inspired.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (1721). Brandenburg Concertos (Johann Sebastian Bach) — culture for Paul Taylor (musicbrainz.org)
• The Moor's Pavane by José Limón (1949). The Moor's Pavane (José Limón) — titan for Paul Taylor (wikidata.org)
• Appalachian Spring by Martha Graham (1944). Appalachian Spring (Martha Graham) — titan for Paul Taylor (wikidata.org)
• Martha Graham (1894). Aureole (Paul Taylor) — legacy for Martha Graham (via Aureole, Appalachian Spring)
• The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. The Rite of Spring (Igor Stravinsky) — culture for Paul Taylor
• Dark Elegies by Antony Tudor (1937). Dark Elegies (Antony Tudor) — ghost for Paul Taylor
• The Shakers by Doris Humphrey (1931). The Shakers (Doris Humphrey) — titan for Paul Taylor
• Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 by George Frideric Handel (1739). Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 (George Frideric Handel) — culture for Paul Taylor

Peers and kindred spirits

• Rouben Ter-Arutunian (1920). Interviewer notes Ter-Arutunian's experimental designs were done for Paul Taylor. “the most extraordinary desire that you have done and very experimental and radical decides that you've done have been for martha graham and for paul taylor and forty sousa de ballet and dance companies” (Listen! (public broadcasting))
• Martha Graham Dance Company. Paul Taylor developed as a dancer/choreographer through the Martha Graham Dance Company. “It has helped develop many famous dancers and choreographers of the 20th and 21st centuries including Erick Hawkins, Anna Sokolow, Merce Cunningham, Lila York, and Paul Taylor.” (Wikipedia)
• Dances at a Gathering by Jerome Robbins (1969). Dances at a Gathering (Jerome Robbins) — peer for Paul Taylor (wikidata.org)
• Fancy Free by Jerome Robbins (1944). Fancy Free (Jerome Robbins) — geography for Paul Taylor (wikidata.org)
• The Red Smile by Alex Katz (1963). The Red Smile (Alex Katz) — collaborator for Paul Taylor (wikidata.org)
• Summerspace by Merce Cunningham (1958). Summerspace (Merce Cunningham) — geography for Paul Taylor
• Deuce Coupe by Twyla Tharp (1973). Deuce Coupe (Twyla Tharp) — peer for Paul Taylor
• Trio A by Yvonne Rainer (1966). Trio A (Yvonne Rainer) — geography for Paul Taylor
• Bed by Robert Rauschenberg (1955). Bed (Robert Rauschenberg) — collaborator for Paul Taylor
• Revelations by Alvin Ailey (1960). Revelations (Alvin Ailey) — peer for Paul Taylor
• Radio Days by Santo Loquasto (1987). Radio Days (Santo Loquasto) — collaborator for Paul Taylor
• Alvin Ailey (1931). Aureole (Paul Taylor) — peer for Alvin Ailey (via Aureole, Revelations)
• Robert Rauschenberg. Three Epitaphs (Paul Taylor) — collaborator for Robert Rauschenberg (via Three Epitaphs, Bed)

Who Paul Taylor influenced

• Rise by Doug Varone (1993). Rise (Doug Varone) — legacy for Paul Taylor
• Caught by David Parsons (1982). Caught (David Parsons) — legacy for Paul Taylor