“I feel like I’m losing a part of myself when he steps away from me,” Kristin Draucker told Observer. “Thoughts come into my head about how he’s looking down at me, or how I’m moving away from him, then moving back towards him, trying to find the reasons for why we come together… Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to come back together as one. Sometimes it feels like we’re fighting each other for dominance.”
You might well assume Draucker was talking about a fraught romantic relationship, but she was actually sharing what she thinks about while dancing in Tablet, a duet choreographed by Paul Taylor in 1960 that hasn’t been performed in almost 50 years. The work has been meticulously reconstructed, along with another early piece, Churchyard (1969), for Paul Taylor Dance Company’s return to The Joyce Theater.
This is a love story, in the way that all reconstructions of old masterworks are a type of love story—there is passion, dedication and obsession. But as stories go, it is also a mystery. When reviving a dance created 65 years ago and not performed since 1976, one has to look for clues and gather evidence. In the case of Tablet, the evidence was sparse: photographs, a dark and soundless video of a single rehearsal, some stick figure renderings in Taylor’s notebook, a few reviews and interviews, and the muscle memory of two dancers who can no longer recall any of the steps—only “the sensation” of the piece.
When artistic director Michael Novak, Taylor’s successor since 2018 and a former dancer with the company, was putting together the program for The Joyce, he went back to “the vault,” as he calls it, to find rarely seen or forgotten works to perform alongside Taylor classics Cloven Kingdom (1976), Polaris (1976) and Esplanade (1975). As the leader of a legacy repertory company, he knows it is his responsibility to look at the founder’s extensive archive and bring back works that are “important for our dancers, important for our audiences and important for our field.”
Tablet caught Novak’s eye for several reasons. “It’s whimsical, it’s quirky, it’s athletic, it’s hard,” he laughed, “and I can’t think of anything else like it in the repertory in terms of duets. And I like the fact that audiences won’t have seen it for 50 years. Even though it’s ‘old,’ it still feels like a world premiere in the sense that everyone’s experiencing it new for the first time.” It was the only time Taylor collaborated with abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly, and one of the only pieces he made for Pina Bausch (partnered with Dan Wagoner, who danced with Taylor in the Martha Graham Dance Company at that time). Many people don’t know that Bausch danced for Taylor.
When it came to who would reconstruct Tablet, Novak knew Richard Chen See was the man for the job. Chen See danced with the company from 1993 to 2008, has been staging Taylor’s dances since 1999 and is now the company’s director of licensing. Chen See knows Taylor’s aesthetic, his mind and the way he worked on a bone-deep level. He was excited to take on the role of detective, “digging into every kind of evidence that I could find.”
Bausch and Wagoner are no longer with us, but Chen See knew Wagoner well and was familiar with Bausch’s work. He brought his knowledge of how they both moved to the table, along with the video and other sparse findings. Novak chose Draucker to take on Bausch’s role (“her angularity reminds me of Pina”) and Devon Louis to take on Wagoner’s (“his muscularity and power and partnering remind me of Paul”). The two have been paired together before in, as Draucker said, “quite a few tricky and rather dangerous things,” so they have a built-in trust.
“Paul used to say, ‘I look at the success of my work when it still speaks to me, no matter who’s dancing it,’” Chen See told Observer. Bausch and Wagoner leave big shoes to fill, but Draucker and Louis have stepped into them with gusto, and the work definitely still speaks.
For Draucker, dancing a role originated for Bausch is a dream come true. She fell in love with Bausch’s work at the same time she did Taylor’s. When Bausch passed in 2009, she remembers thinking, “Now she’ll never see me dance.” But after watching the dark and grainy video of Bausch twisting, ribbon-like, in Tablet, Draucker realized that “through this work I could connect with this woman who has influenced the way I think about dance so deeply, in a way in which I could never have imagined. So it feels like such a rare, precious gift that I’m holding super close to my heart, artistically.”
Louis was thrilled to help resurrect the duet as well. For him, it’s an opportunity to connect with a younger version of Taylor, with whom he never got to work. “For a large portion of the dance, I kind of go into a trance state,” he explained. “Not because I’m not focused and not interested, but because dance really is like church for me. Once I get the movements and the timing and all that out of the way, it feels like I’m floating, honestly.”
Thanks to Chen See’s research, Tablet’s choreography is as close to the original as possible. The music, a challenging commissioned score by David Hollister, is original, too. Novak said, “It reminds me of Stravinsky a little bit,” Louis said. “It makes no sense sometimes.” Draucker called it “surprising” and “playful.”
The bright costumes and backdrop, originally designed by Kelly, are being faithfully recreated as the artist wanted them to be. Novak noted that “the interplay of color is very distinct in this duet. It’s not muted. It doesn’t accentuate humanity. This is moving visual art.”
Taylor didn’t like to talk about his work, believing dance shouldn’t be tied down by words, so no one—not even Chen See—knows what Tablet is “about.” When I asked those involved, everyone had different interpretations. Draucker thought it was about one being separated into two. Louis said it’s about “a form of unity… Masculine and feminine energies working as a unit, being stronger on their own and then coming back together to make one full image.” Novak said, “You can look at it through the lens of binary and soft versus rigid and stuff like that… I see it more as an exploration of shape and form and color.” Ever the detective, Chen See pointed out that a program from 1962 refers to the piece as “an archaic courtship.”
But all agreed that the process of reconstruction was a joy, and they’re thrilled to bring it back to the stage at The Joyce. “I’m looking forward to the newness of it,” Novak said. “It feels fresh, feels unique. I love it when the curtain goes up and the audience doesn’t know what they’re about to see. And I especially love it when it’s something that is from an era long gone. I think it creates a conversation about bringing your history forward, not just abandoning it. I think it creates curiosity and excitement about Paul, even though he’s no longer with us. And I think it fosters an appreciation for his genius that if we only did the masterworks wouldn’t have the type of nuance we get if we show him in his maturation as a choreographer.”
Draucker said her favorite part is when she first runs at Louis and he picks her up. “I’m in this kind of star shape, perched almost on his shoulders. It feels somewhere between being so happy as a little kid and jumping on top of your father’s shoulders, and being so in love with someone you just want to be on top of them. I have to remind myself that I probably shouldn’t be smiling at that moment, but it feels like my body wants to smile.” It is, after all, a love story.
Tablet is running at The Joyce Theater through June 22, 2025.