¶ Last night, we went to what was to have been the last of three Paul Taylor events for this season. It left us with an appetite for more, so I have just ordered tickets for this Saturday’s matinée.

• We went to the matinée last Saturday: Arden Court, Gossamer Gallants, and Esplanade. For the first time, a program of works that we had already seen at least twice. 
• We first saw Gossamer Gallants when it was new. I didn’t care for it. Mostly, I didn’t like the costumes. But the whole thing was corny, starting with the Smetana score, music from The Bartered Bride that used to be a staple at pops concerts. In my radio days, my hands burned each time I scheduled it, which I did far too often, because its length (or brevity) made it easy to fit in. The ballet has grown on me, though, and I now see it as a classic for kids, many of whom could be heard giggling in the audience. Laura Halzack’s vamping flea fatale is powerfully reminiscent of little girls’ dress-up.
• We had persuaded ourselves that, in the first movement of Esplanade, Michelle Fleet took one flying leap over the other seven dancers in the corps, and were disappointed when she failed to do so, the last time we saw the dance. And then again on Saturday. And again on Tuesday, last night. But of course she can’t ever have done any such thing. What she does is a series of jumps as she steps over each of the others, and photographs that have been taken of her doing this have planted the illusion of a magic carpet ride. 
• It is hard to imagine Esplanade without Michelle Fleet, but we were forced to do so when we finally got round to watching Dancemaker, the 1998 documentary about Paul Taylor and his company. It was another dancer, no longer dancing with the company by the time we started going, who made the final turn toward the audience that Fleet makes so beguiling. 
• We watched Dancemaker because I mistakenly thought that we’d be seeing Piazzola Caldera on Tuesday night. I ordered the tickets last fall, evidently as part of an uncompleted project. And I went to each event without checking on the program, enjoying rather the prospect of surprise. Well —  surprise. 
• Precisely because we watched Dancemaker, however, I encountered a must-see ballet that we’d somehow missed, Eventide. Eventide is on the bill for Saturday’s matinée. 
• Commenting on Eventide in Dancemaker, Paul Taylor remarks that, from the beginning (of choreographing it), he knew that the couples would part at the end, because “we move on.” I agree, at least that we move on from youthful positions. But then we “settle down.” 
• Surprise — the program for last night was Continuum, Runes, and — Esplanade. 
• Runes, which dates from 1975, manages to be more interesting than its period portentousness warrants. There is a lot of darkness, and a moon rises on the right and climbs toward the left. Is this how the moon works in the Southern Hemisphere? What happens at the Equator? The music was a long piano piece of pointillistic modernism. The pianist had an archaic-looking CCTV monitor next to the score, so, yes, the musicians do occasionally get to see the dancers. But I suppose it’s unusual. 
• Continuum is set to Max Richter’s Recomposed: The Four Seasons, which I discovered a few years ago, and thought would make a far more intriguing score for a Paul Taylor dance than Vivaldi’s original. And it did, except that the choreography was not by Paul Taylor but by company alumna Lila York. Kathleen found the music too crushingly sad to pay attention to the dancing (“yearning” would be my word), but I thought Continuum was a triumph, an almost perfect marriage of contemporary takes on the classical heritage. York’s dances were notably inflected by classical-ballet tropes, with more than a dash of commedia dell’arte wit. I was reminded at one point of Pollaiolo’s Battle of the Nudes, not that there was any undress or that the ladies weren’t present. I can’t  wait to see Continuum again, although I’ll probably have to find someone else to go with me. 
• For the first time ever (in our experience), Michael Trusnovec was indisposed. 

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