Out of the Rain

Purists still insist on an artistic division between modern dance and ballet: the one should be symbolic, angular, Freudian and sparse; the other dramatic, explicit and lush. But the wall between the two is crumbling rapidly. In any number of U.S. cities, a succession of ensembles on tour have given dance buffs ample opportunity to witness growing evidence of the intersection between modern dance and ballet. Such works as Robert Jeffrey's Astarte and the Harkness Ballet's Time Out of Mind created much of their impact by in corporating modern-dance patterns into ballet. Last week, at Manhattan's Billy Rose Theater, the Paul Taylor Dance Company demonstrated how ideas from ballet have infiltrated modern dance as well, in a graceful amalgamation of soloistic symbolism and an overall feeling for impulse and design.

Not too long ago, Taylor, who studied and danced with Martha Graham for six years, was considered an avant-garde experimenter in choreographic Dada. He composed dances to the sound of rain, and once fashioned a piece in which a couple stood stock-still for four minutes. But in Taylor's Lento, one of the new pieces of his company's current season, his dancers weave gentle patterns to Haydn chamber music, as simple and charming as any moment from Les Sylphides. Another new work, called Agathe's Tale, commits an even stranger breach of experimentalist etiquette: it tells a story. A virgin, fought over by the Angel Raphael and Satan, ditches them both for the bucolic, sensual pleasures of Pan.

Far from being a sellout to storybook ballet, Agathe is a wholly original synthesis of a variety of dance arts. Eileen Cropley's every motion depicts the transformation of the girl from maidenly naivete to knowing womanhood; her timid, mincing steps broaden gradually to final exultant leaps. As Satan, Taylor circles the stage like a great, muscular swooping bird of prey, while Dan Wagoner flutters nervously as a sardonic, sanctimonious Angel and Daniel Williams creates a Pan who seems the exact personification of drool.

In command of movement, in variety of expression, Taylor's company of eleven dancers has moved steadily into the top rank of America's smaller dance groups. Like most of them, its appeal is special, its audiences are small and its financial problems great. But, in the unmistakable flowering of interest in ballet that is currently sweeping across the U.S., Taylor's choreographic synthesis may very well help bring modern dance, no less than ballet, into the affections of American audiences.

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