By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Genius, legend and cultural icon Paul Taylor, widely proclaimed as the greatest living American choreographer, says his half-century career "just kind of happened."

Paul Taylor Dance Company, now in its 49th year, will make its first Cincinnati appearance with three performances of a program of contrasting work next weekend in the Aronoff's Procter & Gamble Hall.

Taylor, 73, is decidedly puckish as he chats about how he chose the program for his introduction to Cincinnati.

IF YOU GO

What: Paul Taylor Dance Company Where: Procter & Gamble Hall, Aronoff Center for the Arts When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday Tickets: $15-$55. 241-7469 There's more: Footnotes, a free discussion, led by choreographers, designers and Cincinnati Ballet directors and staff, will take place one hour prior to performance in the Aronoff's Otto M. Budig lobby.

Mercurial Tidings is exactly as it's named - quicksilver greetings, danced to Franz Schubert. "I thought, let the first dance be one where people notice the dancers really can dance," he says, laughing. From 1982, "It's technically brilliant, it hardly ever stops moving. It isn't about anything. It's a dancy-dance. And very pink."

The Word, from 1998, is about religious extremism, "very appropriate today, but not about the Middle East, the kind we have here at home." Its commissioned score is by David Israel.

The program will conclude with Promethean Fire, which debuted in 2002 and proves septuagenarian Taylor is still at the top of his game.

Performed with the full company of 16 to a sweeping score by J.S. Bach, the piece references Shakespeare's Othello. An accompanying epigraph to the title - "... fire that can thy light relume" suggests the noble Moor and his unfortunate bride Desdemona as a jumping off point to explore the human condition.

The dance is suffused with majestic fierceness, fury and spirituality in its exploration of destruction and renewal.

Upon its debut the nation's top dance critics immediately stamped it as a signature work.

Many critics saw parallels between Promethean Fire and 9-11. Taylor responds, "I was surprised when I read that, but it's OK. I just didn't intend it to be that specific."

Apparently he has mellowed from the days when critics' misinterpreting his work made him decidedly grumpy. He's likelier these days to remark that viewing dance is not a passive activity, that for the best dance experience audiences should bring their own emotions and intellect to respond to his vision.

Taylor credits his company's managers for the truly extraordinary accomplishment of almost 50 years on stages around the world. Paul Taylor Dance Company was born before most cities' ballet companies (including Cincinnati's) and has outlived many fine contemporary dance companies, which have been decimated during the last decade.

Paul Taylor Dance Company is alive and thriving and looks to be for the foreseeable future, with bookings well into 2006.

Taylor says that "never in a million years" did he expect his choreographing career to extend over five decades and beyond.

"I actually thought I'd missed the boat," he chuckles. When he decided on a dance career after studying art at Syracuse University, "I wanted to dance with Martha Graham (he joined that company in 1955) but it seemed like she'd already created her best work."

In those days, he reminisces, nobody had a full-time company. "It was possible, between performances to give concerts of my own, to keep busy. Nobody got paid and there were lots of ratty little places to perform. Everything was possible."

He created the masterful 3 Epitaphs in 1956, the landmark Aureole in 1962, and since then his company has danced in 60 countries and he's acquired a bushel basket of honors and awards.

Taylor calls himself a "reporter" - "because I don't want to be thought of as a moralist," he laughs again. His choreography, he says, is a culmination of everything that he observes - "nature, people, the dancers I work with are very inspirational. I love to read all kinds of books. And the music, of course."

His "reporting" continues. He's just tried out a new piece in Providence, R.I., and, when we chatted mid-week, he sighed, "I really must not procrastinate today. I have to find music for a new piece that I should have started, like, yesterday."

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com