Close Close

Taylored 2 Fit: Taylor 2 Dance takes the next leap forward, at Monmouth U’s renovated Pollak Theatre

As part of its 10th Anniversary schedule of events, The Center for the Arts at Monmouth University has announced that tickets are now on sale for a January 31, 2016 performance by the Taylor 2 Dance touring troupe of the legendary Paul Taylor Dance Company.

Part of the 2016 Winter-Spring Performing Arts Series slate at Monmouth, the 4 p.m. matinee marks the first area appearance by the Taylor 2 company in more than four years — as well as one of the first events to be hosted inside the newly renovated Pollak Theatre. The flagship auditorium of the West Long Branch campus received a makeover during the school’s holiday break interval, with nearly 700 new seats, new carpeting and other improvements enhancing the theatergoing experience for audiences. In addition, the Pollak will boast a newly enlarged stage area, one that’s “Taylor made” for the troupe’s classical grace, exhilarating athleticism, and jazzy humor.

When the seminal choreographer established the Taylor 2 company, nearly 40 years after the first Paul Taylor Dance troupe revolutionized modern American dance, it was with an eye toward bringing Taylor’s vision to venues of every conceivable dimension and scale — by reworking many of his signature pieces for an ensemble that was more compact; highly mobile; unhindered by technical or economic limitations. As the Star-Ledger’s Robert Johnson wrote, “A major interest is in seeing how ingeniously Taylor has edited his work for a six-person ensemble…half the size of the original…this version of Company B is not a hand-me-down, but a lighter and more intimate creation that delivers the same emotional knockout.”

The professionals of Taylor 2 have performed for thousands of people from Ahmedabad to Zimbabwe, in 46 of these United States, day and night, indoors and outdoors, in all manner of environments — and when they take the Pollak stage on January 31, they will comprise a new and different roster of performers from the previous visit to the Monmouth campus in 2011. The sextet of dancers (Rei Akazawa, Alana Allende, Lee Duveneck, Princeton McCurtain, Amanda Stevenson, Johnny Vorsteg) will be visiting the West Long Branch campus on a winter tour of the Americas that finds them arriving direct from a January 30 engagement in Bogota, Colombia. Ruth Andrien directs the company in a new performance of a landmark Taylor work, with past tours having revisited and re-imagined such career milestones as “Images,” “3 Epitaphs,” and “Profiles.”

Tickets for the January 31, 2016 performance by Taylor 2 Dance are priced at $25 and $35, and can be reserved through the Monmouth University Performing Arts Box Office at 732-263-6889, or online at www.monmouth.edu/arts.

Tickets for other upcoming Performing Arts events — including William Close and the Earth Harp Collective (January 23), LA Theatre Works (February 11), and an all-acapella Doo Wop Explosion (February 20) — are also on sale now.

To schedule interviews, please contact Kelly Barratt at 732-263-5114.