Northrop Presents
Paul Taylor Dance Company
With Live Orchestra
Saturday, Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m.
2026-27 Northrop Season
Esteemed for passionate expression and thrilling athleticism, Northrop-favorite Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to set the stage ablaze with highly charged, energetic modern dance — accompanied by a live orchestra provided by STRINGenius. The dynamic ensemble, “one of the most exciting, innovative and delightful dance companies in the entire world” (The New York Times) continues to pulse with the powerhouse imagination of its namesake under the “Taylor-made” appointment of Artistic Director Michael Novak.
The vigorous program showcases three contrasting works that explore the complexities of the human condition through Taylor’s signature theatricality. It opens with the physically demanding dynamic geometry of Taylor’s “Brandenburgs” (Opus 88, 1988), an exuberant, gallant piece set to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 6.
Following “Brandenburgs” is a sensational new work by critically acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz, “Messengers, Maidens and the End of Something Else,” danced to Franz Schubert’s haunting “Death and the Maiden,” with sets and costumes by visual artist Sarah Crowner. In a somber shift, the evening concludes with the company premiere of resident choreographer Robert Battle’s “No Longer Silent” (2007), a “searing” large-ensemble work — “arguably his strongest” according to The New York Times. The piece’s mechanical, ritualistic movement is intensified with “Ogelala” (Ballettmysterium) Op. 53 by Erwin Schulhoff, a Jewish composer whose work was banned in Nazi Germany.
Top image: Paul Taylor Dance Company members Alex Clayton and John Harnage. Photo © Rachel Neville.
Related Links, Quotes & Reviews
“The American spirit soars whenever Taylor’s dancers dance.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Pam Tanowitz has created dance theater of the highest caliber.” — The New York Times
“One of the most exciting, innovative and delightful dance companies in the entire world.” — The New York Times
“The Paul Taylor dancers are at the top of their form, particularly when dancing his repertory which demands speed, strength and style.” — Theater Scene
“Paul Taylor Dance Company is perhaps the most beloved and respected modern dance company in the world, famous for Taylor’s wit, its sunny expansiveness, its all-American optimism and its occasional forays into darkness and gloom.” — Dallas Morning News
“America’s most magnificent dancing machine performing America’s most deeply communicative and wildly theatrical modern dance.” — San Francisco Examiner
“Beauty is the only word for “Brandenburgs,” … [which] celebrates the good things in life. Such a radiant, seamless flow of invention that the choreography seems an entirely natural way of moving to this music.” — Mary Clarke, The Manchester Guardian
“Arguably Mr. Battle’s strongest piece … Battle echoes the rhythmic complexity of the music in his ritualistic choreography that is reminiscent of the early works of Martha Graham and, in many moments, the theatricality of Paul Taylor, yet this dance retains its taut point of view to the end.” — The New York Times review of “No Longer Silent”
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You might enjoy this performance if you love(d):
- Martha Graham Dance Company
- Limón Dance Company
- Paul Taylor Dance Company (2022)
- Aszure Barton & Ambrose Akinmusire: “A a | a B : B E N D”
This will be Paul Taylor Dance Company’s 15th performance at Northrop; the last was in February 2022.
Add to Your Package
Know Before You Go
Event Information
- Seating: Reserved
- Doors: 7 p.m.
- Performance Begins: 7:30 p.m.
- Duration: Approximately 125 mins
- Pick 3 or More Events and Save
If you need assistance, please call 612-624-2345, email umntix@umn.edu.
Planning Your Visit
Related Events
Learn More — Explore These Themes
The content below derives from the Northrop Across Campus Program that supports Northrop’s mission toward cultivating intersections between performing arts and education for the benefit of all participants now and for generations to come.
Find ways to make thematic connections to these suggested topics:
- Dance: Modern, Postmodern, Production, Ballet, Choreography, Contemporary
- Music: Baroque, Classical, Avant-Garde, Experimental, 20th Century
- World History
- African American and African Studies
- Jewish Studies
- Global Studies
- Postmodernism
- U.S. History
- Multidisciplinary Collaboration
- Art Curation and Preservation
- Visual Art and Design: Contemporary Art, Contemporary Sculpture
Dive deeper with these resources that provide additional information about the performers, the history of the art form and the artistic process.
Paul Taylor Dance Company website
Video: “Dancemaker” (1998) (full documentary)
Video: “What made Paul Taylor one of the most influential creators in modern dance”
“Paul Taylor and the Legacy of American Modern Dance” — PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (Access via UMN Libraries)
“The Paul Taylor Dance Company Revisits Its Radical Roots in a One-Night-Only Performance” — Dance Magazine
No Longer Silent | Alvin Ailey website
Video: “The Making of No Longer Silent: Part I”
Video: “The Making of No Longer Silent: Part II”
“Pam Tanowitz’s Choreographic Career Is Blooming” — Dance Reflections
“Impressions: Pam Tanowitz’s Transportive ‘Pastoral’ at Bard's Fisher Center” — Dance Enthusiast
Video: “The making of the new // Pam Tanowitz at the 2025 Vail Dance Festival”
Sarah Crowner - Luhring Augustine website
“‘The Sea, the Sky, a Window’: A Project by Sarah Crowner” — Hill Art Foundation
Start a conversation about the performance or encourage reflection, using these questions as inspiration.
Paul Taylor emerged as a modern dance pioneer after being discovered by Martha Graham following a formative residency at Black Mountain College in 1953. Though he performed with Graham for seven seasons, Taylor’s own 1957 work “Seven New Dances” — an avant-garde piece featuring everyday movements and postures inspired by John Cage’s silent score “4'33"” — garnered acclaim and challenged traditional boundaries. This earned him a “blank review” by critic Louis Horst, one of the most famous pieces of dance criticism. Despite a lifetime of fame, Taylor maintained a legacy of fierce creative independence, prioritizing his own artistic vision over public or critical approval. “I can’t worry about what other people think,” Taylor said in an interview with Allen Robertson in 2000. “If I like the piece, that’s good enough for me. If somebody else doesn’t, that’s tough luck.”
- What does it mean to pioneer in an art form?
- Is it important for artists to consider the audience’s experience, engagement or accessibility with their work? If so, why?
The program will feature a new work, “Messengers, Maidens and the End of Something Else,” by acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz, known for her abstract treatment of classical and contemporary movement ideas. Writing about the world premiere of Tanowitz’s internationally acclaimed “Four Quartets,” The New York Time’s chief dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, stated that it was “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century.” In this new work, set to excerpts from Schubert’s “Death & the Maiden,” Tanowitz draws on the virtuosic skill and musical dexterity of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, along with designs by visual artist and sculptor Sarah Crowner.
- How might an artist today (such as a choreographer or visual artist) incorporate, reference or challenge their historic, artistic icons?
- How does a deep knowledge of formal structures and techniques inform an artist and their craft?
- How does a choreographer’s work with their own company differ from the work they might create when commissioned by a repertory company with whom they work for a shorter period of time?
“No Longer Silent,” choreographed by Robert Battle — Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s former artistic director and current resident choreographer for the Taylor company — is set to music by Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942). Schulhoff’s work was tragically hidden from the world after he was denied employment during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, leading up to World War II. He was prevented from emigrating and died of tuberculosis in the Wulzburg concentration camp in 1942. In 2007, Battle was invited to choreograph to a lost ballet score by Shulhoff for a larger program uplifting historically marginalized composers, and he describes a personal connection with Shulhoff: “His music was stifled, not allowed to be played because of who he was ethnically … I thought, ‘Wow.’ Of course, that had resonance for me as an African American.”
- How might dance as an embodied art form allow for the processing of individual and communal grief?
- How does artistic collaboration between historically oppressed communities challenge structures of dominance like colonialism, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism and fascism?
- What is the interplay between art and sociopolitical violence, especially considering our present-day global context?
Acknowledgments
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
