The Paul Taylor Dance Company, the only Company to bring modern dance to Lincoln Center each Season since 2012, will return to the David H. Koch Theater for three weeks, November 4–23, 2025. The repertoire features classics by Paul Taylor that display his extraordinary range, from romantic to humorous and from poignant to controversial. The repertoire also includes World Premieres by Resident Choreographers Lauren Lovette and Robert Battle that are the direct result of 2024’s Taylor Future Dance Initiative to develop outstanding dance makers. Hope Boykin’s How Love Sounds will have its New York Premiere, and Jody Sperling’s Vive La Loïe! will return for the second Season in a row.
“This year’s Lincoln Center engagement includes timeless Taylor masterworks that form our enduring legacy,” Artistic Director Michael Novak said of the Season he curated, “and important new works by some of today’s leading choreographers, representing a bold future for modern dance. It was critically important to Paul that our Company continue to flourish well into the future with new works alongside his own. I’m thrilled that Lauren and Robert are part of our creative team and have the opportunity to work with our world-class dancers.”
As it has for all Taylor Lincoln Center performances since 2015, Orchestra of St. Luke’s will perform live, led by Taylor Music Director David LaMarche. The Season also features soprano Devon Guthrie and St. George’s Choral Society.
Resident Choreographer Lauren Lovette will present her seventh World Premiere for the Company, stim, set to John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries. Robert Battle, in his first creation as Resident Choreographer, will present Under the Rhythm, a high-energy work set to a vibrant mix of jazz, gospel, and swing influences, with music of Ella Fitzgerald, Wycliffe Gordon, Mahalia Jackson, and Steve Reich. Hope Boykin’s How Love Sounds will have its New York premiere. It was commissioned by Stephen Kroll Reidy and made possible by supporters of The Dancemaker Fund, and co-commissioned by the Kennedy Center. The work, developed with support from the Kennedy Center’s Social Impact Office Hours residency program, features music by Antonín Dvořák, and songs sung by Patsy Cline, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, and Donna Summer.
Paul Taylor’s masterworks anchor the repertoire, from such timeless audience favorites as Esplanade and Company B to the rarely seen treasure, Speaking in Tongues, a meditation on American religious extremism that won an Emmy Award for its television broadcast. Other Season highlights include the return of Taylor’s Walt Whitman–inspired Beloved Renegade, Cascade, Diggity, Gossamer Gallants, Offenbach Overtures, Scudorama, Troilus and Cressida (reduced), and Concertiana, the last of Taylor’s 147 dances. The Season also includes Lovette’s SOLITAIRE, Jody Sperling’s Vive La Loïe!, and the Company Premiere of Battle’s Takademe.
Gala Performance: November 11
On November 11, the Company’s Gala Performance honors legendary American painter Alex Katz, whose bold visual worlds illuminated the stage in 16 collaborations with Paul Taylor. The evening’s program—Sunset, a Taylor masterwork created in collaboration with Katz, and World Premieres by Lovette and Battle—becomes both tribute and toast: a salute to the enduring power of artistic partnership and a dazzling look at the Company’s next chapter.
About Paul Taylor Dance Company
The Paul Taylor Dance Company is one of the world’s leading dance organizations, based in New York City and with a vast international reach. Under the artistic direction of Michael Novak, together with world-class dancers, choreographers, educators, and creatives, the Company continues to innovate and transform the landscape of 21st-century dance performance and education. The Taylor Company was founded in 1954 by cultural icon Paul Taylor (1930–2018), one of America’s most celebrated artists, who molded it into one of the pre-eminent performing ensembles in the world, driven by a belief that dance can convey complex truths about the human experience.
The hallmark of the Company is the brilliance of its ever-expanding repertory. Of the 170 dances that exist within the canon (147 choreographed by Paul Taylor), many are hailed as some of the greatest dances of the 20th and 21st centuries. While celebrating these masterworks of the past, the Company simultaneously invests heavily in the future of the art form. Through the Taylor Future Dance Initiative, Michael Novak appointed Lauren Lovette in 2022 as the Company’s first Resident Choreographer and, in 2025, welcomed Robert Battle as a Resident Choreographer. Together, along with other diverse contemporary voices, they are generating a collection of new works that expand conversations about what modern dance is and what it can become. The Company hosts its annual Season at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with its partner, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, bringing the finest repertory to audiences on a scale rare for the art form.
Dedicated to sharing dance and education with the broadest possible audience, the Taylor Company sustains a global presence through its robust touring programs, both domestically and internationally. Since its first European tour in 1960, the Company has performed in more than 600 cities in 66 countries, representing the United States at arts festivals and touring extensively under the aegis of the U.S. Department of State.
Featured Image: Alex Clayton and John Harnage. Photo by Rachelle Neville.
Image 1: Gabrielle Barnes and Kristin Draucker. Photo by Rachelle Neville.
