"I sing the body electric"

This is why it’s good to have friends — they’ll do things like call you up out of the blue and offer you their spare ticket to a performance by the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the New York City Center. Tonight’s pieces were “Mercuric Tidings,” set to Schubert; the apocalyptic “Last Look”; and a new work, “Beloved Renegade,” inspired by Walt Whitman (hence the subject line).

Observation: nothing looks realer than the red curtain of a theater, luminous under a red spotlight while the rest of the house is dark.