Tom's Life Bits

By Orla Swift, Staff Writer

Choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett, right,
jokes with Carolina Ballet dancers Hong Yang,
left, and Wei Ni earlier this year during a rehearsal.

WILMINGTON - Feet planted apart, arms hanging, heads flopping gracelessly, Carolina Ballet dancers shudder violently as if undergoing electroshock therapy.

Another man ricochets among them as if seeking assistance, comfort or confrontation. Violins in Arvo Pärt's uneasy “Tabula Rasa” escalate their urgent wails. Several women stand immobile on the Kenan Auditorium stage at UNC-Wilmington, watching the panic. The audience is transfixed.

Precisely what is happening in this new ballet, “Code of Silence,” is purposely unclear. Is it about war? Torture? Prison?

Viewers will determine that for themselves when it opens Thursday at Memorial Auditorium. But one thing will be clear from the get-go for Carolina Ballet fans: This moody drama could have come from only one source, and that's Lynne Taylor-Corbett.

The ballet's resident guest choreographer, Taylor-Corbett has created 10 ballets for the Raleigh-based professional company and reworked or revived several more. Some are humorous, such as “The Ugly Duckling” or a Noel Coward poetry romp. Some are offbeat, including a cabaret with singer Andrea Marcovicci. But “Code of Silence” is among her most arresting, matching moods with her 9/11 memorial “Lost and Found” and her masterful dramatic interpretation of Carl Orff's choral cantata “Carmina Burana.”

“Her pieces are always humanly driven,” says principal ballerina Melissa Podcasy, who has danced in 16 of Taylor-Corbett's ballets, first with Pennsylvania Ballet and later in Raleigh. “For the most part, her ballets portray real people – not the ethereal, balletic versions of people, but real people.”

Many outlets for creativity

Taylor-Corbett's unusual approach to ballet comes in part from her upbringing and in part from a pinball-like career that has bounced her from assignment to assignment. She has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, choreographed films (including “Footloose”), and directed on Broadway (“Swing!”), off-Broadway and at regional theaters.

She also works for the corporate giant Disney, directing and choreographing several regional and touring musicals in the U.S. and abroad. And she is directing and co-writing a new musical for Universal Studios Singapore.

While she values the independence of the gypsy life, she says she also craves long-term artistic partnerships such as that with Robert “Ricky” Weiss. He saw her “Great Galloping Gottschalk” at American Ballet Theatre in 1982 and immediately invited her to create a piece for his first season as artistic director of Pennsylvania Ballet.

“I'm not usually that bowled over by anybody,” says Weiss, who didn't realize Taylor-Corbett had previously made two dances for Pennsylvania Ballet. “I thought I was discovering America, but I wasn't.”

Weiss worked with her for his eight years at Pennsylvania Ballet and continued the relationship after he came to Carolina Ballet in 1997. Taylor-Corbett has created roughly one piece each season for Weiss. “Code of Silence” will share this week's program with a new Weiss ballet, “Time Gallery,” set to a score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec.

“What I expect is something interesting at the very least. And what I hope for is a blockbuster,” he says of Taylor-Corbett's work, citing “Carmina Burana,” “Cabaret” and “Carolina Jamboree” as examples. “Even if it's not the best thing she's ever done, you're going to be entertained. And if it's something like this, your socks are going to be blown off.”

Taylor-Corbett says she thrives on the creative freedom she has earned from Weiss. “I don't have to present a finished product on paper to Ricky in order for him to let me do a ballet,” she says. “That is an incredibly rare thing.”

Learning on the fly

Figuring it all out wasn't easy at first for Taylor-Corbett. Raised in Denver, where her mother was a ballet school pianist, Taylor-Corbett headed to New York's prestigious School of American Ballet as a teen and soon realized that she didn't have the body type to make it as a ballerina.

Yet she took on extra ushering shifts at Lincoln Center so she could watch ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and others repeatedly. At the time, she still dreamed she could find a way to star in those ballets.

She explored other disciplines, performing in an Argentine theater piece called “La Violencia del Amor” (“The Violence of Love”) and shaking her booty as a professional go-go girl – all while still a teenager.

She later co-founded a company called Theatre Dance Collection, where her works drew critical acclaim. Yet when she got her first choreographic commission, in Lisbon, Portugal, she was petrified.

“I remember going over on the plane just thinking, 'Oh, they're going to find out I'm not really a choreographer,' because I was just starting and I had no sense of myself as a choreographer, and I kind of thought it was an accident,” she says. “I was just extremely lucky. Those opportunities challenge you and you take chances.”

Carolina Ballet affords Taylor-Corbett many such opportunities, giving her weeks of full-time rehearsals to conjure her creations.

'Always more, more, more'

As a result, she has helped mold the company. Weiss says his dancers have more dramatic range because of her, and she brings out new strengths.

Lara O'Brien was just 20 when Taylor-Corbett plucked her from the company's ensemble in 2003 and cast her in the demanding, comedic title role in “The Ugly Duckling,” despite Weiss' hesitation. O'Brien became a frequent Carolina Ballet soloist.

“The whole process just became so collaborative,” O'Brien recalls of “Duckling.” “I was actually surprised that she was so willing to use so many of my ideas.”

Taylor-Corbett insists that her dancers develop dramatic skills, urging them to explore and act their characters' emotions even in rehearsals, where some of them say they feel silly doing so. Her choreography helps them communicate volumes.

“There's so much subtext behind what she does, even if it's a very simple movement,” Podcasy says. “With her, the process is from the inside out, not the outside in.”

That takes time. Her dancers marvel at – and somewhat dread – her ability to work all day, without breaks and with unflagging energy and focus. No matter how complete a piece seems, Podcasy says, Taylor-Corbett is never satisfied.

“There's always something you can do a little bit cleaner, or a little bit more to get your point across, or a little bit more on the music,” she says. “There's always more, more, more to do.”

That drive is apparent in a “Code of Silence” rehearsal about two weeks before its UNC-Wilmington premiere in August, which concluded the company's summer residency. Assistant director Dameon Nagel bounces between the stage, his notebook and the CD player, demonstrating forgotten moves from previous rehearsals, forwarding and rewinding, struggling to keep up with Taylor-Corbett's fast-paced demands.

Dancer Marcelo Martinez does a cartwheel and Taylor-Corbett decides it looks too circuslike. She suggests a one-handed cartwheel, and Martinez complies, adding a handspring landing. She likes it.

Later, working with female cast members on a wistful scene, she talks about the complexity of Estonian composer Pärt's minimalist score, which ranges from urgent to calm to pleading and which fans have likened to having a conversation with God.

The rhythms are tricky, with phrases of varying lengths. Taylor-Corbett counts aloud, making sure the dancers' movements match the phrases. And she polishes the tiny, precise gestures she designs to complement the subtlest of sounds.

When “Code of Silence” opens in Raleigh, it will have evolved considerably from its seed, a dance that Taylor-Corbett created in the mid-1990s after learning about Amnesty International's human rights activism.

“It's really about traumatized people and people that are trapped in situations that are impossible to get out of,” she says. “That, just as a study of human nature, is very interesting and very poignant.”

Taylor-Corbett is pleased to see the young dancers relating to the ballet's grim themes.

“It's so current, so contemporary,” she says. “And yet it's so timeless that it's something they totally understand. I mean, it could be 'Spartacus,' for God's sake. It's that cyclical thing that we just keep going through and going through and don't seem to learn a lot from.”

She hopes “Code of Silence” resonates with audiences in the same way, because these theatrical tales of oppression must be told again and again if they are to ever make a difference.

“I thought, 'You know? I've just got to go back to this,'” she says. “'This is what I'm meant to do here.'”