Dancemaker

Matthew Diamond's new documentary about the Paul Taylor Dance Company avoids the gush and the complacency of the rest of its species. This is neither a record of choreographed dances -- Taylor has made several good ones already, for PBS -- nor a flattering, pseudo-intimate peek inside the studio that tries to make dancers seem like regular guys.

The 90-minute film shows the world of a great choreographer as a multi-layered, fragile but intense web of near-fanatical people. In rehearsals and choreographing sessions, business meetings, parties, and hotel rooms, they struggle with pain and anxiety. Will Paul choose them for his next dance? Could they somehow falter and jeopardize the company's season or end their career? They hunch over cigarettes in hallways, talking about the glowing moments when they connect with Paul, their punishing regimen and their terror of a layoff, and their unappeased need to dance. At the center is Taylor, a pixie, a demon, a recluse, a genius, an exhausted, over-60 father figure and employer who says he hates going to the studio every morning but can't think what else he'd do.

Diamond's collage editing and agile camera give us a remarkably big picture of the Taylor company, which inadvertently or maybe inevitably became a family over its 40-year history. Breathtaking archival sequences of early Taylor performances and lost dances I still remember get spliced in, not just as scrapbook mementos but to illustrate an ongoing art-life. Former company members reminisce -- but Taylor's not in the room.

The film begins in black and white at the first rehearsal of a new dance, Piazzolla Caldera, and ends with technicolor bows after the premiere. By that time, we know how much those happy smiles have cost.

The Taylor company returns to Boston next fall (October 29 through 31) as part of the BankBoston Celebrity series. There couldn't be a better introduction than Dancemaker.

-- Marcia B. Siegel