Paul Taylor, always moving

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No matter where they live in the five boroughs, New Yorkers prize an address that lets them walk to work. For years, choreographer Paul Taylor commuted on foot between his 1820s federal-style townhouse in SoHo and his company’s studio a few blocks east. But when the Paul Taylor Dance Company lost its lease, Taylor followed the company to the Lower East Side, where I found him last month kvelling over his new apartment: “Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and nine closets. Isn’t that great?”

The place was in remarkably good order for someone who had moved in just a month earlier; those nine closets help a lot, he explained with a conspiratorial grin. But “the main thing” about the apartment -- evident the minute you walk into the living room -- is the expansive view over the East River. Williamsburg Bridge on the left, Manhattan Bridge on the right, and barges, helicopters and FDR Drive traffic passing in between.
“At night,’ he said, ‘I wish you could see it -- the lights and the reflections on the river, it’s beautiful.”

He doesn’t fully feel at home just yet. “Almost every time I walk in, I look around and I think, ‘Gosh, whose nice place is this?’’
He can still walk to work if he wants, but he’ll probably just take the elevator. The “just perfect” new studio, custom-built in the space that once housed the apartment complex’s auditorium, is right downstairs, on the ground floor of his building. For more on my visit with the irrepressible Taylor, whose company dances in San Diego on May 8, click here for my Arts & Books section article.

-- Sylviane Gold