I remember when I first saw Paul Taylor dance. He was at Hunter College, New York, and I was with the critic Edwin Denby. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was really surprised.
At the time, Robert Rauschenberg was doing a set with Paul and he wanted Paul to dance with a table on his back. Paul told him he wouldn’t do it and Rauschenberg said: “How could you say no to such a great idea?” They parted and Paul was going to perform in Spoleto in Italy. Edwin said he thought I could do the set. So Paul called me, I went over to his studio and I made costumes and a set for his piece Meridian (1960).
In the New York dance scene at the time spotlights were often used: puddles of light to give the dance a 3D feeling. I wanted to flatten that. I had white light and did the whole thing in pastel colours. It was a very radical way of doing it. Paul would go with anything. He responded to music more than words. We never spoke about the meaning of the work. But we didn’t talk much anyway.
Costumes for dancers have to move in time and space. Leotards are perfect but if you don’t get the costumes right they’re going to rip. My technique got better as we went along over the next 20 years. In the end I would have stage ideas and would present him with them and he would figure out the movement around them.
For one show I made a cube for the dancers to dance inside. Paul didn’t like the costumes I did and he changed them. I went up to see him and told him I wasn’t happy. When Paul asked me if I was going to continue collaborating with him, I said: “Yeah, when you burn those costumes.” And he did! He said: “Here’s your box of ashes.” And then we started working together again.
