Private Domain

Knowing that their career days and minutes on stage are numbered, dancers should live moment to moment. Heeding his own advice, Taylor writes his autobiography in the present tense. Explaining the longevity of his well-known dance troupe as a mixture of luck and hard work, he recreates his early struggling years when often he couldn't afford to buy food. He describes in depth his work with Merce Cunningham, Pearl Lang, George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp and others in a footloose career that took him from Burma to Mexico. Dance, for Taylor, is above all a means of communicating, whether a performer shares private dreams or mimics daily gestures. This lyrical autobiography conveys the joys and frustrations of a life in dance, culminating in Taylor's wrenching decision to abandon performance for choreography when his body failed him. Photos. (April 21)