Sunday, February 10, 2008
By Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
What better way to celebrate the season of love than a slow dance to a favorite song? Aliquippa native B.E. Taylor is Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s choice for this year’s concert at the Byham Theater on Valentine’s Day weekend, where there also will be a trio of pas de deux and “Fluctuating Hemlines,” a ballet from “Peter Pan” choreographer Septime Webre.
William Edward Taylor (you do the name math) has always had an avid local following, with sold-out concerts at places such as Heinz Hall, the Capitol Music Hall in Wheeling, W.Va., and the Scottish Rite Cathedral in New Castle. Everyone comes to Taylor for a little musical lovin’, and he feels “compelled to share” — with KDKA, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Fred Rogers commemorative concert, Pittsburgh jazz trumpeter Sean Jones and more.
Taylor learned to love music the hard way, discovering it when he was forced to curtail his activities at age 11 because of a bout with Bright’s disease. He formed a high school group and then his own group, which led to three albums in six years and a couple of national hits, “Karen” and “Vitamin L.”
Taylor attributes his success to the fact that he and his band “do what we enjoy and we enjoy doing it.” He likes variety — R&B, pop, rock, calypso, reggae, ballads. But the major labels, MCA and Epic/CBS, wanted one style, so he decided to do it his way.
Now, he relishes the audiences who come to listen. “It’s music that you can let your kids listen to,” says Taylor with pride.
Choreographer Laurie Stallings wants to introduce a new element to Taylor’s music. The Point Park University alumnus has danced on the edge in Cleveland/San Jose Ballet, BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio, Ballet British Columbia and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
Retired from performing, she is in her third season of dance-making, already impressive in winning accolades in Chicago and currently the resident choreographer of Atlanta Ballet.
When working with a “living artist” such as Taylor, Stallings wants to start with a “clean slate” and bring him “to a new state of awareness” with PBT audiences.
So Stallings adds “new architecture,” not necessarily emulating the music, but sharing the “same living space.” She will also add a scenic design by Pittsburgh-based artist Christo Braum, who uses a mixture of resin and steel to create a colorful design, including a large floor that is lit from beneath.
Stallings is interested in giving back everything she has received, primarily the European influence she encountered while at Hubbard Street. She was known as “a very individual dancer” and likes to have “movement coming from all places.”
On this particular day at the PBT studios in the Strip District, Stallings creates her own soundtrack — “hm-m-m, pah, pah, schwit, pas de bouree” — throwing the dancers out of whack and then sucking them into a recognizable ballet position. She wants it “simple and clear and more delicious” as she squeezes everything out of each morsel of movement.
“Real life is all about rhythm,” says Stallings, so she focuses on the heartbeat to achieve a sense of space, then moves on to an ebb and flow of phrasing.
She likes to push the dancers to the brink and then give the audience a pause to digest it, acknowledging that Taylor’s music “is very supportive of that.” As a result, Stallings is creating a “little short story” to each of his songs, with the end of each story leading to another.
Taylor sees it differently. He visited an earlier rehearsal and noted that “as the song flowed, so did the dancers. It was breathtaking for me,” he says. “The dancers were all smiles, but they weren’t bigger than mine.”
The only thing that would please him more is a great, big collective smile, even wider, from his audience.
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