A dancer carries a choreographer’s work in the body, sometimes for decades. The steps, the musical phrasing, the smallest shifts of weight become part of an intimate physical knowledge. But what happens when that dancer becomes responsible for the choreography itself, for preserving it, interpreting it, and passing it on?
Michael Novak has lived on both sides of that question. A former member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, where he danced 56 roles in 50 dances, he was named Taylor’s successor in 2018 and became artistic director following the choreographer’s death that August. At 35, Novak assumed responsibility for an extraordinary body of work, along with the challenges of keeping it alive.
Novak also inherited Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, an initiative Taylor established in 2014 to bring the works of other modern dance choreographers into the company’s repertory. Under Novak’s direction, the company has continued to perform Taylor’s choreography while reviving works by other major figures in American modern dance and commissioning new works from contemporary choreographers. Novak sees these endeavors not as competing interests but as essential to the vitality of modern dance.
With the company preparing for a three-week season at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, the programming reflects the breadth of Novak’s directorship. Alongside ten Taylor dances, the season includes two world premieres, a New York premiere, two company premieres, and the return of a recent Robert Battle work.
Catherine Tharin: Having danced so many Paul Taylor works, you know them intimately. But now you’re watching them from the outside. How has your relationship to the choreography changed now that you’re responsible for directing the company?
Michael Novak: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think I’m very fortunate because Paul’s choreography is so spectacular, and his craft and his musicality is just a wonder to watch. And there are so many dances that I sit and I watch.
When you watch dances at that level of genius, you’re trying to understand the craft of it. What was important to Paul visually, musically? What elements did he change over the years?
We have a very famous saying here, and it comes from Betty de Jong, that dances grow up as do dancers. And this idea that the repertory is a living thing and it evolves. Paul would make tweaks and things, and so studying those tweaks, why he changed something, what was pulling his eye interests me. And I recognize that sometimes what is seen from the front is not what’s felt from the inside.
One of the things I try to do as leader is to ask the dancers. I just finished rehearsal now. I certainly give my notes about all the things that I’m seeing from the front and giving some images and some nuances and transitions and things. But there’s also a question of, what are you feeling from the inside?
Because what I found is sometimes effort can be applied, but it’s not reading from the front. Or musicality, or they think they’re applying it, but it’s not reading. And that’s something that I’m very sensitive to.
In weight training they call it cueing, meaning that there’s different ways to describe how a move should be executed. And the choreography is the exact same, but what part of the body are you talking about with the image? What’s the archetype? What musical note are you trying to emphasize with all these nuances? I’m making sure that what the dancer is hearing and executing is what I’m seeing.
And that’s very different from when I was a dancer, where I was taking the note and trying to implement it as quickly as possible.
And I think the other thing I’ve noticed, and this comes from Betty de Jong as well, is that sometimes it takes a while for an artist to settle into a role. You don’t want to over-knead the dough, you might say. There’s a point where they’ve received enough information, and it’s time to give them space to grow and to find it.
You can over-note something, or you can break it down to a degree that can actually stagnate progress. And so being sensitive to that as well. When is enough enough? Let them find it. Let them live in it. Let the work teach them too. That’s a big lesson.
Let the work teach.
Yeah. The dances teach you a lot. And there’s a point in the staging process where we’ve done our job at the front of the room. Paul’s craft, the works themselves, need to teach the dancers something. And trusting that the craft will teach them the nuances of the work, how to find transitions, how to push, when to hold back, how to relate to one another.
That’s very rich. You spoke about Paul tweaking and coming back to a work. Can you give an example?
There’s one section in Esplanade, in the fourth movement, that he kept playing around with. And it’s a very simple moment where there are the three couples and they’re on their knees, and the women reach and touch the men’s cheeks.
And ever so slightly, the gentlemen turn their heads and meet the women’s eyes. And he kept playing with that moment and that canon that’s supposed to happen musically, all the time.
And as a dancer, I was like, what? Because we tried all these different ways.
What did he try?
The timing of it. Where on the cheekbone? Is it the jaw? Is the cheek? Is it the bone? Is it closer to the ear? Is it the palm?
And the answer is, do what he wants because he just can’t find it.
And now I watch that moment and there’s something to polish there. And I’m also trying to watch it and figure out what it is. It’s super subtle. It’s a ghost of a move. But something about it does pull my eye now. I see the missing of something, but I can’t figure out what it is. I have empathy for Paul in that moment, still trying to figure out how to fine-tune it.
He never figured it out? He was never satisfied then with that moment?
As far as I know – we just kept playing with it. I think maybe at one point he was just like, “Okay, well, you know, it’s fine.” But as far as I know, it was one of the things that he kept playing with.
And are you now playing with it?
Not yet. I’m watching it a lot before I give my note. I’ll keep you posted.
Yeah, I’m curious. Maybe it has something to do with what’s inside of the motivation.
I do see it and sense it, but figuring out what’s going to get people to find it is a skill set. And that’s what makes extraordinary teachers extraordinary. They have a way of homing in on a student.
Do you like to learn by images? Is your imagination where you live? Other people live by count or very rigid structures, and they like to work very confined, like it’s this or this or this. Other people want to know, what image should I be taking on? What’s my story?
And you need to be able to address the artists where they are and where they like to live in the world.
How fun, though. I mean, that’s like being the very finest of craftspeople.
Yeah. It’s fun.
Speaking of the repertory, you just mentioned Esplanade, which we will see onstage when you’re at the Koch for three weeks. Alongside it, you’re bringing back several works that haven’t been seen in over a decade. Why do you feel this is the moment to revive these dances?
It varies for different reasons. I always have a long list of dances that are in the vault that are rotating in terms of hierarchy, and what I want to bring back.
And some of it is driven by the times that we’re in right now. Byzantium is a work of Paul’s that is moderately inspired by the Byzantine Empire and the past and present and future, and this kind of commentary on a civilization that is at the height of, at that time, culture and mystic traditions, and slowly collapses because of greed and power and political corruption, which I thought felt timely to bring back.
But then you have dances like Spindrift and Arabesque, which I’ve been wanting to bring back for a while. But I also look at the company and, what is the dance that I’m excited to see them take on? And how is it going to challenge their artistry? Because I want them to be able to grow deeper and deeper into the repertory.
I’m also looking at, is it this year or next year? What are they going to really want to chew on, you might say?
I did dance Arabesque. I think it highlights the company’s technique and their speed and their flair. It’s a beautiful little quirky work of Paul’s in what I call the classical side of Schoenberg.
And I think it shows Paul’s craft. I want them to know that quirky side of Paul – the musical vocabulary that’s so curious and odd and crab-like, because there’s that side of him too.
Yeah, he was funny.
We need comedy. You know, 3 Epitaphs is beloved by audiences. It’s a great little palate cleanser, you might say, and laughter is important. And Paul was very good at it.
I wanted some laughter on the season and something new and different from what audiences have been seeing.
Well, this brings up a couple of questions for me. When you speak of Paul’s craft, can you identify the craft? I mean, Balanchine had his craft, Limón his. Choreographers each have their own craft.
I think it’s a couple things that Paul did extremely well.
One, I think he guides your eye incredibly well. He tells you where to look. He pulls your focus in beautiful ways, and usually just before you’re ready for the next thing, or your eyes start to get tired, just when we don’t even know it, just when your eye’s ready for a new thing, he gives it to you.
It creates this cascade of geometry onstage that keeps your eye constantly moving and looking for what’s going to be happening next. There’s just the geometry, the pattern work, and how that guides the eye is one thing.
The designs are another thing that significantly enhance the poignancy of the work. I don’t think design can be underestimated in terms of what’s elevated. Not every costume sketch was the final sketch. Paul’s origin story as a painter and visual artist carried through and worked for him.
I think his musicality and his range of music is part of that.
What I love about Paul’s work, to Bach specifically, is how Paul has choreography to what you call the melody, and then he goes on to the Bach continuo, and the dances all of a sudden are matching this undercurrent from the basses and cello. They’re dancing against the melody. No one’s dancing to the melody, and the melody is soaring, and Paul has the movement literally ride from the treble to the bass. And that enhances the poignancy of the work.
A dance like Airs, where he’s pulling from six or seven different Handel concertos, suites, overtures, Paul splices them all together and it sounds like it’s one piece of music. His ear was uncanny, especially for someone who didn’t read music.
I didn’t remember that.
And I think the last thing for me is, they’re kind of interconnected with this. He wasn’t afraid of stillness, as we’ve seen.
He played with stillness in the avant-garde days of the 1950s. But stillness to show the human and not necessarily the dancer. And I think that is something that’s apparent throughout his repertory. He was not afraid of simple.
He’s not afraid of less is more. And that’s a very hard skill to hone, especially when you have such a rich imagination and vocabulary at your fingertips.
Yeah. To hold back anything. You’ve spoken about Paul’s extraordinary musicality. Many of Paul’s contemporaries collaborated with composers and visual artists of their time, as did Paul. But he also had a particular affinity for classical music. Did he ever talk about what attracted him to it?
Yeah, definitely a heavy Baroque presence within the repertory. There’s also a lot of, I say pop music, which is probably better to say American songbook. And, 20th century experimental works.
I don’t know specifically what it was in that early classicism, Baroque music, that pulled something out of Paul, but I’m grateful it did.
I’ll also add someone like Debussy, which doesn’t get a lot of press time, but Paul choreographed six works to Debussy. And Debussy pulled something very mystical out of Paul. All the Debussy works have something very mysterious, like you’re looking through fog or smoke, a different world.
He definitely had these different sides of himself. The composers pulled that out, that flavor, out of him.
Did he begin with the music?
It varied. Certainly, during my time as a dancer, it was music first.
For Paul, at least towards the end, it was very much the music. He came in with a plan, a particular plan. He respected Balanchine’s time management and his efficiency in the studio. ‘This is what I’m here to work on. When I’m done working on it, I’m done. And this is my next day.’
But there’s stories of Paul playing with movement, Paul watching people, music coming after, music changing, Paul starting ideas and scratching them and getting rid of things completely and starting over, certainly in the earlier years.
But then there’s other dances that, hearing alumni talk about it, was like he was channeling something. It was like an out-of-body experience, and it was just like the dance was already made. It sounds kind of mystical, but the dance was already made and Paul just put it into form.
And there were some artistic processes that were like that, where it just felt like this is done already, or just materializing it.
Paul Taylor danced with Balanchine, didn’t he?
Well, he probably learned a few things.
In addition to Taylor’s choreography, you’ve made room for revivals of other modern dance pioneers. I’m delighted you’re bringing back Alwin Nikolais’s Tensile Involvement. Works like this could be lost without companies taking them on. Why this work, and why now?
Yes. I had a number of Nikolais works that I was looking at, and Tensile Involvement had been on my list for many years. And sometimes it’s honestly a question of when and how and what works for the schedule. It’s very much a business strategy decision about when things can be executed.
I watched several Nikolais works, trying to figure out what’s present, why, and what I was looking for. Very much like I was looking at a lot of Loïe Fuller-inspired work when I commissioned Jody Sperling.
I definitely do my research. And I guess, what am I looking for? I’m looking for something from the canon, the American modern dance canon, that will read at Lincoln Center, at the Koch, and if anything will kind of break apart this notion that modern dance is in the past.
And make people realize how timeless and awe-inducing these works are. Kind of rewrite that narrative of, think again, and let me show you why. Bam. And here’s this piece.
I’m going to tell you in the program what year it premiered, but part of me in this moment in time, I’m like, I’m not going to tell you when this was made. Look at it. Let it just wow you. I love doing that with audiences.
And then what is he going to do next? What’s the next gem out of the vault that we don’t know about, or we might not know about as an audience, that he’s going to find for us?
So, building up that reputation of being able to deliver is important to me.
The ’50s were such a remarkable time for modern dance. I mean, the choreographers still wow you. They’re the bedrock of our field, of modern and contemporary dance, and so powerful.
So powerful. And they’re so individualistic.
Yes.
You see an individual who has honed their own way of moving in their body to such an amazing degree, and how it translates to choreography. It’s undeniable.
And so many of them were tapping into that, certainly in the ’50s and ’60s, even before that. And Doris (Humphrey) and Ted (Shawn), you know, all of them. I mean, just that power of the individual.
Yeah. And certainly Paul Taylor. I mean, he’s a leader in that individuality. It’s a fearless and brave act to follow your intuition to that extreme, to that degree. And not to be embraced for it. He wasn’t in the beginning, certainly.
Yeah, true.
Well, I imagine that being in dances versus being outside of them after Paul retired from the stage in 1974, I mean, the dances he started producing once he could see them, not just be in them. I mean, the late 1970s, the masterpieces kept coming. Airs, Esplanade, Cloven Kingdom, Dust, and the list just goes on and on.
So him being outside of it also affected him, and that’s where his career kind of had another, like a second boom, frankly, after Aureole.
What a great point. Yes. Of course it would be different, completely different being inside and outside.
So, Robert Battle. He is an interesting connection to the Taylor lineage through David Parsons, and then directing Ailey, and also interested in legacy. And now he’s actually an artist in residence with the Taylor company. It’s interesting that he’s now with the company as a choreographer in residence rather than just, say, a commissioned choreographer. What is it about his voice that’s important to you?
I feel because Robert studied with Carolyn Adams at Juilliard, then danced with David, Taylor is in his DNA as a mover and as a dance maker. And it feels like an extension of Paul having him here.
His works are Robert Battle through and through, but where he lives, where he comes from in his body, it does have a Taylor origin. And it translates very seriously onto the company.
And even No Longer Silent, which we’re having on this upcoming Lincoln Center season, reflects how our movement comes from emotion and intention.
We really, through Paul, live in an emotional place within our repertory. Even if we’re indifferent or cold or detached, it’s an emotional concept.
And so, Robert being here, and something like No Longer Silent, the dancers are taking it on in a very unique way because the Taylor repertory has informed their own DNA.
So, it’s adding a very uncanny…it’s symbiotic. There’s just an alchemy that’s happening, kind of hard to put into words, but it’s remarkably easy in terms of how it’s coming together and the communication, the creativity. There’s a flow in it. Everyone’s coming from the same alphabet.
Yeah. But that must be very different with Lauren Lovette and Pam Tanowitz.
Yeah, it is different.
Lauren, because of her time dancing Balanchine, there’s Balanchine’s level of speed and how Balanchine kind of turned ballet on its head. He took notions of what 19th-century ballet should or should not do, or how you should or should not partner a woman. Balanchine is right there asking those questions and pushing the art form forward.
And Lauren, I think, absorbed a lot of that from dancing his work, musicality, the unconventional approach to partnering, kind of defying expectations of where audiences think a ballet choreographer should go or what they should do.
So I think she carries that in her. She brings that into the room. And I think that, in a different way from Robert, there is also an edgy, unexpected thing with Lauren, which will be in her world premiere (titled 30 Incoming) for this season, which I’m really excited about.
That also serves us. People think they might know what to expect, and again, like, I’m going to show you the work from 1953 and I’m going to blow you away. You had a preconceived notion? I’m going to check you on that.
Look at where they’re going and what they’re doing. Look at how they’re pushing the art form forward and how they’re pushing the company.
And Pam Tanowitz does the same thing in a very different way because of her formalism.
Speaking of a love of minimalism and craft, Pam is just, she’s an incredible editor. And her use of counterpoint, stillness, there’s a sophistication and clarity and cleanliness that is very unique.
It is impossible work. With the Cunningham origin, it is definitely specific in terms of a lot of relevés, strong hamstrings, strong glutes, strong calves. It is being executed kinetically from a different place.
But because of Pam’s modernist flair – Paul certainly had that. So the dancers also kind of lean into that as well.
So the three premieres could not be more different from each other. And yet they all have, there is an origin within the Taylor vocabulary somewhere over the 64 years of his dance-making.
Well, after all, Taylor and Cunningham both danced with Graham. And Pam Tanowitz says she’s been influenced by Balanchine. It all kind of works together, but comes together in its own unique way through Paul Taylor, through his sense of movement and musicality.
I’d like to speak about Orchestra of St. Luke’s. It is so exciting that you dance to live music.
Yeah, we work very hard to make that happen.
I can only imagine. But it makes such a difference to dance to live music as a dancer, and as an audience member to experience live music. Could you put into words what that experience is like for both?
I think live music, and an orchestra, especially an orchestra as prolific as Orchestra of St. Luke’s; “collaborator” is almost an understatement for what it brings to the theatrical experience, both for an audience and for dancers.
Because it is in the moment. You have to be. It forces you to be present as an artist.
And there are moments where you become in conversation with the orchestra and you start to become one mind, and there’s a flow that happens where it’s almost like you start to read each other. You’re pushing the music just as much as the music is pushing you.
And it does change the energy in the air. It does create a very real ephemeral moment that cannot be replicated in technology, the way live performance is.
Some of my most transformative experiences as a dancer onstage have been to live music.
Promethean Fire is one example. To hear those opening notes of the Toccata and Fugue coming from the pit when you’re on, I mean, you literally feel like the lava of the earth is bubbling underneath your feet. And it changes you, and it sets a tone for what you’re about to produce as an artist. And that wouldn’t be there without live music.
So true. And of course, for the audience, the audience doesn’t know what to expect either because the dancers and the musicians are working together in the moment.
Yeah. It’s not the prerecorded special that’s been edited and synced. These are real people in the moment collaborating on real art. And that’s becoming kind of rebellious right now, actually.
What a good way of putting it. Real people coming together, creating real art in a real moment is standing out now in all these conversations about technology and AI and AI-generated art.
It’s becoming a thing. It’s becoming a commodity again in a very dystopian way, but certainly profound.
I mean, people very rarely experience dance and sound live. Very rarely.
Yeah. And we’re very lucky that we have an amazing board and our patrons help us do that and believe in it and believe in the power of when dance and music come together. We’re very lucky that they have our back.
Well, I’m sure you’re helping them see this too. I mean, people have to be introduced to ideas of beauty sometimes.
One hundred percent.
Speaking of rebellious, you’ve made every seat for opening night $10. It’s a remarkable commitment to making dance accessible. Perhaps you could speak about the thinking behind it.
The gift came from a dear board member, Elise Jaffe and her husband, Jeffrey Brown. And it’s something we’ve been doing for many years now with their support.
And it really is rooted in a belief that cost should not inhibit people coming to have an aesthetic, transformative experience, and that the community that’s built on a night like that is powerful.
And yes, it’s about coming together and celebrating the art form and having a great program and celebrating the company. All those things. It does all that.
But it also, again, I think in this moment in time, the notion of, in all of our individual worlds and our hyper-curated devices and our social media platforms, to have 2,500 people show up and for just 90 to 120 minutes all connect together through dance and music is really powerful.
And cost shouldn’t get in the way of that.
And you never know how audiences may be hurting financially. You never know from year to year why someone used to be able to come and can’t anymore, or what barriers might be at play. We can never assume that.
But we should create access. We should create opportunity for people to be able to come in. The Koch Theater is New York’s theater. Everyone should be able to be there and experience it and experience our art.
It of course brings up the fact that audiences need to be built too. Young people don’t necessarily have the opportunity to come into a theater where the ticket prices are high.
And a lot of our students that come in through all our outreach programming with Arnhold Tier 3 and Polaris Projects, and we work with dozens upon dozens of schools and not-for-profit organizations, a lot of these students have never been in the theater before. This is their first time in the theater.
And what we’ve learned in that process, we have been doing a lot of study-guide work from an educational standpoint, prepare them for the art that they’re going to see.
Start at the beginning. Welcome to this building. Welcome to how it was designed, what it was designed for. Here are the things you’re going to see. Your ticket number matches your seat number. They don’t know these things.
So if you can make it an exciting moment of discovery, make it a journey for them, and then get to the art, I mean, you can literally change lives in that moment.
And that fosters awareness of the art form, passion for it, potentially aspiring dancers or dance makers or designers.
So it’s really, what is the child’s experience from the beginning to the end seeing the Taylor company, just like it is with patrons? We’re there to show you the whole experience.
The art may be the capstone, but there’s so many other moments that we can make rich before the curtain even goes up that can make you welcome, and that you’re about to experience something special.
Good point. Just that part of it is exciting.
Yeah. Walking into the theater.
There was a time in my life where I’d never been in the theater before and I’d never seen a show before. And that first show, that first performance, I would say every dancer in our company could probably name that moment, that show, that ballet, that Broadway production, that company that they saw. You’re like, “I want to do that.”
What was it for you?
Phantom of the Opera.
How old were you?
I would have been seven or eight. It was the first national tour of Phantom of the Opera in Chicago.
And I’d never seen… how all of us entered this building from everywhere. We all live in different places, and everyone, different ages and all these things. And within two minutes of the opening of that musical, how the musical just transports you back in time.
I just remember being in complete awe and the chandelier comes crashing. I mean, it was just like, what? What is this world that we’re in?
I want to create this every day. This is my playground. This is my arena. This is my church. This place.
And that you have done.
That I have done and continue to do.
Paul Taylor appointed you, and then he died just a few months later. You were only 35. I felt protective of you when I read that, thinking how quickly you had to grow up without your mentor.
Losing a founder is no easy thing.
But I think Paul did such incredible work getting us set up for the future of the company, fiscally, programmatically.
He watched what happened when other founders passed away, and what could happen to organizations, what could happen to art. And he really did his homework.
He really set us up quite profoundly. And I only understand it the longer I’m in my position, what he did and how selfless it actually was.
And he was smart in identifying you as a successor.
Oh, thank you. We never really talked about it.
Oh, wow.
It was just…We knew each other much more as dancer to choreographer.
But I definitely shared thoughts about Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, and he launched it and I was very excited about it.
And I believe in the art form and where it’s been and what it’s done, and the icons that came before who need to be onstage.
And I care about where it can go and what it needs to do, especially right now.
And that scope of the past and what we’re creating today for the future, it’s very much a part of my own belief system. It’s very genuine, how much I love the art form.
Paul Taylor Dance Company’s 2026 season runs through November 22 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. Click here for tickets.
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