How the maestro measured up

New Zealand choreographer Douglas Wright tells MIKE HOULAHAN about his time with the legendary Paul Taylor's dance company.


When Douglas Wright left New Zealand's pioneering Limbs Dance Company in 1983 for New York, he told the other dancers he would definitely be back - "unless I join the Paul Taylor Dance Company."

He was joking. But just three weeks later he was a member of the Taylor company, the latest lineup of which is visiting New Zealand.

Wright did return to New Zealand - with the "inspiration" that Taylor gave him - and has created a proud history of work with his own and other dance companies.

"He's a wonderful man and this is a wonderful company," Wright enthuses. It's essential viewing to see this company."

Taylor, a onetime soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company and in ballets by George Balanchine, has created works for ballet companies the world over as well as his own company.

His work in dance has been recognised by more than 40 awards, including a French knighthood and a United States National Medal of the Arts presented by President Clinton.

Wright had seen the Taylor company perform while in the United States with Limbs the previous year. Soon after his arrival a friend told him there was a rare open audition, the Taylor company's first in four years.

"I went along to that thinking I didn't really have a chance. There were about 120 men for this one job," Wright recalls.

"You were supposed to be over five foot eight, and I wasn't quite. I remember Paul came up right at the beginning, he took around one of the women and stood her beside people he thought were not of the required height.

"He said to me, 'Are you five foot eight?' and I said, 'Well, I dance five foot eight.' His eyes twinkled and he let me stay."

Over that day more and more dancers were cut from the audition until Wright and one other dancer were left.

The pair came back the next day, were given 15 minutes to learn solos from the company repertoire, then had to perform them in front of the company and Taylor.

"The first time I forgot it in the middle and I thought, 'Oh well, that's it.' Then they taught us a different one and I nailed it. I kind of knew then they would take me, and they did."

Things worked out all right for the dancer who missed out, Wright says. He ended up in the Mark Morris Dance Group and toured New Zealand when that company came here two years ago for the Festival of the Arts.

Wright was a Taylor company member for four and a half years and was constantly on the road. Apart from a month off in summer and a month to create new works, the company toured the United States, Europe and South America.

"He would often say he would dream the dances," Wright says. "He would say, 'It's not quite what I dreamed, but it's really close.'

"He would ask us to make things up, but he always wanted it to be in his style, his domain."

Despite the inspiration, Wright feels his own work has never consciously echoed Taylor.

Being a choreographer is akin to the Freudian concept of killing one's father, he says. "You have to repudiate what they do and stand for, to strike out on your own. Otherwise you just stay there."

However, the master dancer did teach him a great deal about musicality, how to deal with large groups of dancers and how to approach rehearsals.

Ironically, Wright, an Aucklander, will be in Wellington when the Taylor company performs in Auckland. He is choreographing a new work, Halo, for the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Festival 2000 season.

But he hopes to travel home to catch the Taylor performances.

Next year Wright plans to continue working with fellow choreographer Shona McCullagh to create a new contemporary dance company. The original plan had been to join forces with Michael Parmenter, but Parmenter's withdrawal from the project has forced a rethink.

"We plan to go ahead but we just don't know in what form. You need to regroup and try to think positively again.

"We worked so long on creating the blueprint for a certain model of company, and then having that pulled out from under your feet, it takes a while to have the energy to think calmly about where to go."

- NZPA

Who: Douglas Wright What: The Paul Taylor Dance Company Where: Aotea Centre When: Tomorrow to Sunday