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One of these, “The Tower” (1957), with décor by Rauschenberg, had costumes by Jasper Johns, who was then living with Rauschenberg. In 1958, when Cunningham made “Summerspace,” one of his enduring classics, Rauschenberg designed superlative costumes and décor in impressionist-pointillist style. Some of the paint work was contributed by Mr. Johns, and some by Mr. Taylor.
On Oct. 20, 1957, Mr. Taylor presented the most radical offering of his early career, “Seven New Dances.” Two of the seven, “Resemblance” and “Duet,” set to Cage’s music, had choreography akin to the composer’s 1950s departures from conventional music — using radical stillness and ordinary pedestrian movement. Mr. Taylor later recalled audience members walking out. Louis Horst, his former Juilliard teacher, wrote a review of the work in the magazine Dance Observer with a single blank space in lieu of words.
These choreographic experiments nonetheless developed Mr. Taylor’s interest in ordinary gesture and non-virtuoso motion. Henceforth, however, he grew more interested in keeping audiences in their seats.
Mr. Taylor had joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1955; he remained there for seven years. (“Naughty boy,” she remarked of some of his own choreography; he later reported those words with pride.) “Clytemnestra” (1958) was the most famous dance Graham created during his time with her troupe; it was also the blockbuster of the long period in which she revisited Greek myth by way of psychology and feminist affirmation. She played the title role; Taylor was Aegisthus, her evil lover and second husband.
He later wrote, however, that Graham’s work had become artificial by the time he joined her company. The Graham works that he felt were most sincere, deep-hewn and potent were ones that came from the 1930s and early ’40s, such as “El Penitente.”
Perhaps the most valuable element that Mr. Taylor took from Graham was her modernist dance technique, with the forceful expressive tension that it forged between torso and legs. In her work, the body was often excitingly at war with itself. In his work, that tension would be translated into a vehemently lyrical current.
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