To conclude the first week of its fall season at Lincoln Center, Paul Taylor Dance Company offered up quite the Sunday service of Speaking in Tongues and Offenbach Overtures, both brilliantly danced with a sharp, bold energy. The company looked superb.
Speaking in Tongues, which Taylor choreographed in 1988, references a lot of grimy goings-on in the context of a Southern pentecostal church. The dance was made during the time of the televangelist scandals of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, the Assemblies of God investigation, and when the first sheet was pulled back on the Catholic Church abuse crisis. If Antony Tudor had not left this earth the year before the premiere, he might have sat in the theater awestruck by his former student’s crisping of the moral failings of the church.
At Sunday’s matinee, Lee Duveneck as A Man of the Cloth revealed layer upon layer of evil within his character, a devil’s food cake of a performance. Everyone in the cast took their characters to their lowest morality with conviction, passion, and divine dancing.
The fluffy, flouncy Offenbach Overtures was the blissful relief to the sordid church community. The mustachioed, elaborate-hatted men and the sassy French-ruffled women all in hibiscus-gone-mad red were delicious in their comedic waltzing and galloping.
Speaking in Tongues is on the bill this coming Friday, November 14th along with Gossamer Gallants, the bug-infested hysteria from 2011. Don’t miss it. Ticketing on the Koch Theater website is a challenge these days because most people who set up purchasing accounts cannot get in to buy anything. One either has to call the box office or use a second email address that is unknown to the Koch system and check out as a guest, not an account holder. The system has been malfunctioning for quite some time — not acceptable for a Lincoln Center theater.
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