Here's an excerpt:
A cool advertising campaign, shot by renegade dance photographer Jordan Matter, captures the dancers' ballsy uptown foray. Eight of the PTDC's 16 dancers chatted with HuffPost Arts about the photo shoot, and why the move matters.
"Don’t we love the illusion of photography, that trick of the eye? I am jumping up. It’s not Photoshopped.
"They hailed the taxi, they paid the driver to park a few minutes. We set up a trampoline, mostly because it was concrete. We did that a bunch of times, to get the angle so it would look like my foot was coming out of the car.
"We were right in the middle of Lincoln Center, in the street. It was really exhilarating to be out in the public, on a public plaza, with everyday people going by.
"It’s difficult to capture the essence of the dynamic energy, the flight, of Paul Taylor’s sense of movement -- and Jordan was able to capture it.
"Knowing the history of the dance that has been presented at Lincoln Center, to be a part of that history, and to become part of the legacy that is that theater is a huge opportunity for the company."
-- Michael Trusnovec, with Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1998, now its most senior member
“Yeah, it was really fun. They wanted to have a shot with someone, in white, jumping over that sign. I was excited because I knew I had this great white dress from the duet that concludes "White Roses."
“It was high traffic area and he wanted me to do it over and over and over and get right over the sign. Usually [Jordan] doesn’t use trampolines, [but] it’s an intense rehearsal period and I didn’t want to get injured, so we used the trampoline. And it saved my life, probably.
“It’s kind of scary, it wasn’t that big of a a trampoline, and you have to line up over it. I’m used to doing a jeté and getting the line I want on it. But when you’re moving forward to get that line, versus, when you are jumping up, it’s a different coordination. The front arm, in a slight 'vee' up, is a Taylor arm.”
-- Eran Bugge, with PTDC since 2005
"It was very impromptu. It had just finished a torrential downpour of rain, it was 8:30 at night. It hadn’t rained the whole summer, and we were shooting, and it was still raining. They said to me, ‘Are you ready? Let’s do it. Go put some tights on.’
“I put on red tights, came down out of the Koch Theater, and he [Jordan Matter, photographer] decided to put me in front of the fountain. ‘Do whatever,’ were my instructions, ‘Just be in the rain.’ He didn’t have anything particular in mind. I started jumping, it was raining on me. It was really incredible. You know you are in an epic shot, the lighting design of Lincoln Center is so magnificent, we were trying to time the jump so when I was in the air, the fountain was shooting up, so there would be up and down.
"You can’t really tell that it’s raining [in the photo], it just looks like I’m shiny. I have never felt such a rush in a photo shoot before, dancing with the elements, and there’s a huge crowd watching this crazy person jumping up and down in the rain."
-- Francisco Graciano, joined the company in 2004
To see more photos and the full article on the Huffington Post website, click here.
To my favorite dancers in the world- Merde tonight! (for those who don't know, that's "Good Luck" in dance speak)
