Suffering for His Art

“Dancemaker,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about choreographer Paul Taylor, evoked vivid memories, rapturous and dark, about my years at the barre.

The film is a glorious insider’s look by Matthew Diamond, a former dancer, that conveys the passion Taylor’s modern dancers have for the art and their desire to give life to the vision of one of the world’s greatest choreographers.

The gripping film also shows the sweat, the muscle aches and the emotional turmoil the dancers endure. Some might call it tyranny: Former troupe members recount how, just before important performances, Taylor would tell them a piece was “just not working . . . and it’s your fault.” One recalls the devastation of “the Christmas massacre,” in which Taylor fired the entire company during the holiday (he later reneged).

My ballet teacher was in no way a talent like Paul Taylor. But he choreographed several original ballets for our six-member chamber group. Some of the students he helped train at our small school more than two decades ago achieved success with such acclaimed troupes as Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet and New York’s Eliot Feld Ballet.

He also did things that devastated us, only much more so than anything portrayed in “Dancemaker.”

Although Diamond said he had almost total access, he never shows Taylor yelling, although the film is peppered with what I perceived as clear references to that. In one scene, Taylor’s longtime assistant explains that they get along so well because he knows she’ll forgive him “when he yells at me.”

My teacher yelled--no, he screamed--if we failed to remember a correction or properly execute a grueling routine or step. He shouted obscenities, horribly demeaning epithets that we teenagers rarely if ever had heard before. Once, he rehearsed us until 5 a.m. He often hit us, hard, with the thin wooden dowel he used to keep count, and he played debilitating mind games like Taylor.

Once, furious over a perceived slight, he came to the dressing room--in the middle of a performance--and told us we were all dispensable and not to forget it. Try dancing two more pieces after that.

To be sure, this was tyranny--no, emotional terrorism--from a profoundly troubled man who would surely be sued in today’s litigious culture. But I kept his behavior a secret, fearing my parents would force me to leave.

To non-dancers, this may be incomprehensible. But we had the passion for dance and the desire to please so powerfully and convincingly depicted in “Dancemaker.” As Taylor says, dance is not a democracy. Rather, it’s a dictatorship, and the cruel dance master is a part of terpsichorean lore.

Great art--or even mediocre art--doesn’t require great suffering to grow, of course. It’s like the fallacious idea that all great artists are insane. But at 15, perhaps as only a 15-year-old can, I loved dancing more than life itself. I fell for my teacher’s proclamations that he was the best around.

Nonetheless, by my 16th birthday, I’d awakened to his insane, manipulative ways and defected to another ballet school. I won’t forget my first day there. As I tensely began my plies, my new teacher jiggled my hand to relax it and said, “Enjoy it, love.” I thought I’d died and gone to dancer heaven.

I do not want to cast aspersions on Taylor’s magnificent work. And I have absolutely no reason to suspect that Taylor, while he had his lapses, ever physically abused his dancers or terrorized them as my teacher did us. More than anything, “Dancemaker” celebrates Taylor’s talent and the joy of dance. It is an inspiring film, not just an enlightening one.

But my teacher’s cruelty, particularly because he was in a position of power, was inexcusable.

I’ll be forever grateful to him for the discipline he inculcated, for the artistic standard he upheld, and for the opportunities for creative expression he gave us. We didn’t just perform the “Nutcracker.” The innovative, contemporary ballets we danced to Bach, Falla, Debussy and Gershwin painted dramatic portraits of complex human affairs. I have thanked and forgiven him.

But would I send a child to him for lessons? Never.

* The documentary “Dancemaker” screens tonight at 7 at Edwards University in Irvine. Taylor 2, the professional, six-dancer adjunct to Paul Taylor’s main company, performs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at Keck Theater, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road, Eagle Rock. $10 to $20. (323) 259-2922. Taylor’s main troupe performs April 24 and 25 at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. (800) 414-2539.