Fall at Paul Taylor Dance Company: ADHD, Love and Jazz

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1598943" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/1_Robert-Battle-in-Rehearsal_Photo-by-Noah-Aberlin.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A choreographer stands on stage giving instructions to a group of dancers dressed in white shirts, suspenders, and bowler hats during a rehearsal under deep purple lighting." width="970" height="728" data-caption='Robert Battle’s first work for the company is set to songs by Wycliffe Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson and Steve Reich. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Photo by Noah Aberlin</span>’>

For the first time in its 71-year history, the Paul Taylor Dance Company has two resident choreographers, and both will present world premieres during the company’s Lincoln Center season (November 4-23). While they come from very different worlds—Lauren Lovette is a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet (NYCB), and Robert Battle performed with the athletic, contemporary Parsons Dance before founding his own Battleworks Dance Company and later serving as artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 12 years—they both represent an aspect of Paul Taylor’s (1930-2018) distinct aesthetic.

“I don’t think it can be underestimated how much Balanchine influenced Paul,” Taylor’s artistic director Michael Novak told Observer. George Balanchine invited Taylor to be a guest artist with NYCB when he was a member of Martha Graham’s company and even created a solo for him in Episodes (1959). And while Balanchine made neoclassical ballets and Taylor made modern dances, both choreographers shared a deep reverence for music. Balanchine always listed the composer before the choreographer in his program copy, and Taylor followed suit. “Lauren represents that lineage in terms of her craft and musicality,” Novak said, “and breaking down conventions of what a form is expected to produce. Through Balanchine, she understands Paul intuitively.” He was drawn to this aspect of her choreography when he hired her as the company’s first resident choreographer in 2022. “And,” he added with a smile, “there’s a rebellious side to her that has always fascinated me.”

Battle comes by the Taylor lineage more directly. Though he never danced in the company, his mentors Carolyn Adams and David Parsons were both former Taylor principal dancers. When Battle brought a Taylor work to Ailey, he was able to meet Taylor and talk with him. “Paul liked Robert,” Novak said. “So there was a relationship there.” Battle, who came in as resident choreographer in 2025, also brings a physicality and sensibility similar to Taylor’s.

“Combined,” Novak said, “they are an incredible intersection of Paul’s journey as a choreographer.” Lovette’s and Battle’s new works, which both premiere on November 11, are strikingly different, yet share overlapping themes: looking to the past in order to look inward, self-acceptance and—just like Taylor and Balanchine before them—a reverence for music.

Lauren Lovette’s stim

Lovette’s stim, her seventh work for the company, is set to John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries and inspired by her experience with ADHD. “I have pretty intense ADHD,” Lovette told Observer. “I’ve always known that about myself and felt that it was a negative thing, something to be frustrated by. But now I realize, especially after making this piece, that it’s actually a really cool thing. It’s what helps me do what I do.” Lovette made stim in only four weeks—the shortest time she’s ever had to create a work—during a period of major personal transition. She moved upstate and gave birth to her daughter in the midst of the process and realized she could thrive under pressure. “I was super focused. Now that I can step back and see it, I love this piece and think it’s not something I could have come to if I were in the other half of my brain, or trying to just line everything up perfectly. It had to come sporadically, in pieces.”

The work for seven dancers bows to its intense score. Lovette danced to the same music in Peter Martins’s Fearful Symmetries (1988) while in the corps at NYCB, and—even though that work used to give her stress nightmares—she wanted to create a modern take on it. “The music is perfect because it has this really rapid-paced, relentless, anxious score and I wanted to explore anxiety. I wanted something with a high breath because that’s how I’ve been feeling lately, and what I’m seeing in the world right now.” The score is indeed relentless and complex. Lovette channels that energy in her choreography, layering solos, duets, trios and quartets without pause. “They just continuously dance,” she explained. “Each dancer will go very hard for a minute or two and then go off stage and breathe for 30 seconds, then come back out. So it’s a marathon piece, but it just fits. Everybody gets just enough rest to get through it.”

Like Balanchine and Taylor, Lovette is fascinated by musical detail. “They do a lot of tricky little moves in small amounts of time. I enjoy listening to each little note, finding an underlying phrase, and then bringing that to life through movement. And there’s also a lot of running. I think if I had to dance it,” she laughed, “I would complain.”

The creative process was eye-opening for Lovette. Despite her physical and mental load—or perhaps because of it—she finished the work in record time. “I wasn’t able to doubt myself. I couldn’t nitpick. Instead of trying to silence all the ideas that pop into my head every ten seconds, I just let go of trying to control things and used them. I let the dancers bring themselves into the piece, and I’m so happy with the result.”

Robert Battle’s Under the Rhythm of Jazz

Battle’s Under the Rhythm of Jazz—his first work for the company—features 15 dancers and is set to a series of jazz, gospel and swing songs by Wycliffe Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, and Steve Reich. It is inspired by the woman who raised him, an artistic and vibrant figure who introduced Battle to poetry, jazz and the importance of community.

“I didn’t start out thinking I was doing an ode to my mom and her influence on my life,” Battle told Observer, “but as I was choosing the music, it just sort of came out that way… All of it ties back to my youth and to her profound influence on me—not just as a person, but as an artist.”

One section in particular brings their relationship into sharper focus. It is set to Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, overlaid by a poem. “I was going to recite it and record it, but I was at my mom’s house in Miami, and I was telling her about the poem, and she took the piece of paper and started reading it. I was like, oh my goodness, it has to be her! And so you hear her voice, and mine underneath, reciting this poem. It’s our first collaboration together.”

While Battle’s movement style remains powerful and sleek, its tone has evolved. “I think I’m less afraid to be personal in this work than I have been in the past. I’m feeling like, in this next phase of my career, I don’t have to hide my true voice or disguise it, or be tough or be whatever. Just say what you have to say. Let it come from the heart. Alvin Ailey said some of the greatest works of art are those that are the most personal. And that really resonates with me now at this point in my life.”

There’s vulnerability in the work—and joy too. “My mom was always joyous,” he said. “She lived through a lot more than we have—segregation, racism, bigotry—but there was always laughter, always comedy, always a sense of joy. And I wanted to touch on that as a form of resistance. In many ways, this work is a celebration of things that I’ve learned observing her over the years.”

For Battle, choreographing for the company felt like a homecoming. “[Taylor has] been in my orbit throughout my dance career, and now it feels more than serendipitous that I’m becoming a part of the legacy.” He also appreciated getting to know the dancers more deeply. “I can’t say enough about how amazing they are as artists and how wonderful they are to work with. I think sometimes people think that’s an obvious thing, but it always needs to be said because they are the physical manifestation of the legacy.”

Other works this season

Along with the two world premieres, the company will perform a range of Taylor classics: Scudorama (1963), Esplanade (1975), Diggity (1978), Sunset (1983), Company B (1991), Offenbach Overtures (1995), Cascade (1999), Troilus and Cressida (reduced) (2006), Beloved Renegade (2008), Gossamer Gallants (2011) and Concertiana (2018). A highlight is the revival of Speaking in Tongues (1988), last performed in 2013, a work about American religious extremism that earned an Emmy Award for its television broadcast. Most pieces will be performed to live music by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

Also on the season are the return of Lovette’s Solitaire (2022) and Jody Sperling’s Vive La Loïe! (2024), the company premiere of Battle’s Takademe (1999) and the New York premiere of Hope Boykin’s How Love Sounds (2025).

“We took on a lot of Taylor’s comedic pieces this season,” Novak said, “which was intentional. I needed it, and the company needed it. There’s something about comedy that is so powerful for morale. It’s good for us, and the audiences, too.” Speaking in Tongues and Beloved Renegade are heavier works that explore faith in contrasting ways, but the majority of the pieces are heartwarming. “It’s an emotionally generous, warm repertory for the most part, and we can’t wait to share it.”

Paul Taylor Dance Company is at the David H. Koch Theater for its Lincoln Center Season through November 23, 2025.

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