Company B

Jennifer Tipton was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Cornell University. After graduation, she came to New York to study dance, and her interest in lighting began with a course in the subject at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College. She has been awarded two Bessies and a Laurence Olivier Award for lighting dance; her work in that field includes pieces choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jiří Kylián, Dana Reitz, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp, among many others. In 1991, she received a Dance Magazine Award and has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Theater Program Distinguished Artist Award and a grant in the National Theatre Artist Residency Program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Her theater work has garnered a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Kudo, a Drama-Logue Award, two American Theatre Wing Awards, an Obie, two Drama Desk Awards, and two Tonys for The Cherry Orchard and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. She was the recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001 and the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003. In 2008, she became a United States Artist “Gracie” Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow. Ms. Tipton is on the faculty at the Yale University School of Drama.

Paul Taylor (1930–2018) stands among the most significant American artists of the twentieth century — a choreographer whose 147-work repertoire helped define and expand the possibilities of modern dance across more than six decades.

Born in Washington, DC, on July 29, 1930, Taylor came to dance relatively late, discovering it through books while on a swimming scholarship at Syracuse University. He transferred to The Juilliard School and launched his professional career in New York City, eventually joining Martha Graham’s company in 1955 — a position that placed him at the crossroads of modern dance’s founding generation and its future. In 1959, George Balanchine invited him to perform with New York City Ballet, creating a solo in Episodes especially for him.

Taylor founded his own company in 1954 and began choreographing in earnest, earning early notoriety with Seven New Dances (1957) and his first major success with Aureole (1962). His work ranged from luminous and romantic to dark and unflinching, tackling war, sexuality, religious hypocrisy, and mortality with equal conviction. Works such as Esplanade, Speaking in Tongues, and Company B are now considered landmarks of the form.

His honors were equally sweeping: Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, three Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, and France’s Légion d’Honneur. His memoir, Private Domain, was nominated by the National Book Critics Circle, and his documentary, Dancemaker, received an Academy Award nomination.

Taylor died in Manhattan on August 29, 2018, leaving a legacy that continues to shape modern dance worldwide.

Santo Loquasto is a Tony and Drama Desk award winning designer for dance, theater, and film. Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove marked the beginning of a long-term relationship with American Ballet Theatre. He also collaborated with choreographers Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paul Taylor, Agnes de Mille, James Kudelka, and Mark Morris. For film, Mr. Loquasto has received Academy Award nominations for production design for Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway and Radio Days, and for costume design for Allen’s Zelig. Other film credits include Desperately Seeking Susan and Big.