Newcomer: Micaela Taylor

Micaela Taylor watches the dancers from under the brim of her baseball cap, dressed in sleek sweats, barefoot. At 30 years old, the quietly spoken American is used to putting her muscular, often stuttering steps and rhythms into the bodies of her collaborators—this time, in the rehearsal I watched in Vancouver, Canada, the dancers of Ballet BC.

Los Angeles, though, is Taylor’s city: it’s where she was born and raised. It’s where, in 2016, she founded her company, The TL Collective (TL stands for “To Love”).

It’s also where, in 2022, she became BODYTRAFFIC’s first artist in residence.

Taylor is slowly building a presence beyond North America, and over the last few years has had premieres with Rambert2 (Home), Acosta Danza (Performance) and Nederlands Dans Theater II (Lights, Camera, Dismantled).

Taylor’s vocabulary is an athletic mix of hip hop, gaga and ballet, with echoes of Crystal Pite (whose work she admires) in the pulsing bodies, whether solo or in ensembles. She uses the face as a choreographic tool, pushing the dancers to engage the eyes and mouth as part of the movement. Her style favours quirk: she told the Ballet BC dancers that one odd air-scratching gesture “needs to feel annoyingly different.”

As a dancer, Taylor’s long slender limbs bring precisely calibrated drama and power to her own performances. She’s out to make things real, as evident in her 2022 dancefilm Misfit, which includes dialogue in a scene set in an L.A. grocery store.

Her stylistic intentions are supported by the technique she has developed, Expand Practice, which is described on TL Collective’s website as “exuding emotion from the core and creating varied physical shapes and textures as expressions of one’s authentic self.”

Two weeks after my studio visit, Taylor’s Ballet BC work, Salt Conscious, made its premiere on March 7. The theme is burnout, depicted in swiftly changing scenarios full of youthful swagger exuding energy, energy, energy.
www.thetlcollective.com