Laid Bare to the Corps

Last spring, in the course of shooting “Dancemaker,” his Oscar-nominated documentary about the Paul Taylor Company, director Matthew Diamond had a scare.

Heading for the New Delhi airport after the troupe’s U.S. Embassy-sponsored India tour, he was told that the back latch of the minivan had snapped and that bags containing footage from the event had tumbled out. Diamond, followed by five members of his creative team, jogged at midnight along the unlit highway, scouring the pavement for the missing film.

“I was dressed in black,” recalls Diamond, 47, “and I was thinking, ‘What a stupid way to die.’ Still, I couldn’t stop myself from trying to retrieve those once-in-a-lifetime events: the U.S. ambassador reading President Clinton’s statement about Taylor leading dance into the 21st century; or the troupe continuing to dance when the audio broke down in front of 2,500 people--and ending up in sync when the music came on.”

Things worked out much better than expected--both here and abroad. A good Samaritan picked up the film and returned it to the frantic Americans, whom he spotted at the side of the road. Closer to home, Diamond’s documentary debut became an Oscar contender, a Directors Guild of America nominee and winner of the 1998 International Documentary Assn.’s feature award. Critics, too, heaped on the praise. “As revealing and meticulous a portrait of the dance world as the movies have given us,” proclaimed the San Francisco Examiner. Time magazine gushed: “It might be the best dance documentary ever.”

The 98-minute feature, which required 23 days and just under $1 million to shoot, records the insecurity, aches and pains, fiscal pressures and intra-corps politics that come with the creative turf. Specifics, Diamond hoped, would add up to the universal: dancers lighting up cigarettes to relieve tension, a troupe member agonizing over--and, ultimately indulging in--a platter of petit fours, still another giving an interview while soaking her feet in the sink.

“The goal was to ground an idyllic, ethereal art form in reality,” he says.

The documentary presents rare archival footage of Taylor performing in the 1950s and ‘60s and illuminates the world around him as he creates a new work, “Piazzolla Caldera” (which the troupe will perform at Glendale’s Alex Theater in late April). Still, the story is more a human one than a technical dance film, Diamond suggests.

“I was making a date movie, not one aimed at people who buy subscriptions to the ballet,” he says, digging into a ceviche and hummus appetizer at a West Hollywood hotel. “This story cuts across all sorts of groups, since we all have ambition, we all experience frustration. It’s like me heading for ‘Hoop Dreams’ though I know nothing about basketball or getting into the NBA. Reaching a broader audience was one of Taylor’s motives [for making the documentary] as well.”

The choreographer is shown, warts and all, both demigod and despot. His early years, dealt with in passing, are linked not only to his deep-seated need for family but also to the “depravity and mayhem,” as Taylor puts it in the film, that found their way into four decades of his work. Born to parents who divorced when he was young, the choreographer lived with a couple whom, he later learned, his mother paid to raise him.

“I had no desire to make a valentine,” Diamond says. “And Paul agreed to let the chips fall where they may.”

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That Diamond is a former dancer-choreographer gave him a leg up, so to speak. A graduate of Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts, he danced for Louis Falco, choreographed for the Washington Ballet and the Batsheva Dance Company, and had his work performed at Jacob’s Pillow and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He formed his own company, Diamond, in 1980 but, at the end of its well-received 1983 European debut tour, he pulled the plug on his dance career. Itching to communicate in a broader way, he turned his attention to TV and film.

Relying on contacts--and more than a bit of good fortune--Diamond managed to shift gears. Directing soaps and children’s television brought him two Emmy awards. Comedy, in the form of shows such as “Designing Women” and “The Naked Truth,” was another direction he pursued. In 1995, Diamond won the DGA’s musical / variety prize for directing and choreographing the TV special “Some Enchanted Evening: Celebrating Oscar Hammerstein” and, this year, was nominated for a program on tap dancer Savion Glover. Just last month, he shot the American Ballet Theatre’s “Le Corsaire,” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, one of several “Great Performances” he’s done for PBS.

Diamond also did several shows for public television’s “Dance in America” series--including Taylor’s “Speaking in Tongues” in 1992 and his “The Wrecker’s Ball” four years later. When Walter Scheuer, producer of the Oscar-winning “From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China,” came up with the idea for “Dancemaker” in 1996, Diamond was the natural choice. The work of choreographic greats such as George Balanchine and Martha Graham was never sufficiently explored in their lifetimes, Scheuer said. Why not capture Taylor at his peak? Diamond’s relationship with the choreographer worked in his favor, and the project got underway.

Shooting an open-ended documentary, he soon discovered, is a world apart from filming fiction or reinterpreting specific performances for the screen. Without a set story line or a dance to follow, the course is much more uncertain. “I’m used to being in control on a sound stage--working with a script, telling actors what to do,” Diamond explains. “With a documentary, you can’t ask people to repeat what they’ve done--you just hope the camera is pointed in the right direction.”

For 10 months on and off beginning in December 1996, he planted himself in the Taylor company’s New York studio. He was given free range--even into the dressing rooms--but for one stipulation: no nude shots without permission. Luck, as always, factored in. That the dance being documented would become Taylor’s biggest hit in years added impact to the footage. And, on a more practical level, the fact that the dancers worked without mirrors, relying on Taylor for visual feedback, meant the camera was never in the way.

Editing down 100 hours of footage took another 10 months and led to some serious soul-searching. At one point during the shoot, a dancer was fired. Diamond decided he had to include the segment despite a request that he leave it out. “As a documentarian, I made a commitment to tell this story--good, bad and indifferent,” he says. “It was agonizing for me, but there really was no decision.”

That’s not the way the dancer sees it. In an article published in the Dance Insider magazine this month, Jill Echo claims that Taylor never told her why she was being fired. Instead, she--and the rest of the world--got the critique on the big screen. “Reporters have to tell the truth,” she said in a phone interview, “but they don’t have to devastate people in the process. I signed a waiver, but I trusted their judgment. This was a cheap shot.”

Taylor is shown justifying his actions, saying it was necessary for the greater good. He hasn’t changed his mind. “Everybody liked Jill,” he says now, “but in this arts business you have to be ruthless--it’s a matter of excellence, guarding the work.”

“Dancemaker” also taps into the softer side of the choreographer who chokes up when discussing the AIDS-related death of a beloved troupe member. Almost as poignant are clips of the tall, lanky Taylor dancing “Aureole” in 1962, intercut with him watching Patrick Corbin performing it today.

“It was the old codger watching the nice, young guy,” Taylor observes. “I was surprised they didn’t shorten it. That solo was much too long--but, then, all my dances are. One part of the movie I did find a bit embarrassing: the scene in which I was supposed to be coming up with dance steps and I stood there scratching my head.”

The choreographer says he’s pleased with the product but has his reservations about the medium.

“I was a dancer, and dancers rarely like seeing themselves on TV or in film,” he explains. “It’s like hearing your voice on the answering machine. And when it comes to live performance, there’s a lot the camera doesn’t pick up. Still, Matthew and his crew did a great job getting it down. I look at myself and think, ‘Who is that guy? I’d like to get to know him better.’ ”

Though he has hit the jackpot his first time out, Diamond isn’t a permanent convert to documentaries. They’re just another storytelling tool--a new weapon in his artistic arsenal, he says.

Heading outside at the end of the interview, the director reaches into his pocket to pay the valet. A worn dollar bill, pulled from his wallet, brings home the downside of pigeonholing himself.

“Look at what someone wrote on it,” he says, flashing a grin. “ ‘The world of reality has its limits. Imagination is boundless.’ ”

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“DANCEMAKER,” Westside Pavilion, 10800 Pico Blvd., (310) 475-0202; Edwards University 6, 4245 Campus Drive, Irvine, (949) 854-8811.