DANCE REVIEW : GOLDEN OLDIES BY TAYLOR & CO.

Only yesterday, or so it seems, Paul Taylor was an engaging renegade, a compelling maverick, a brilliant leader of the post-Graham avant-garde. Now he looks respectable.

That needn’t be bad. There is nothing wrong with respectability, in moderation.

Still, the program that opened the weekend stand of the Paul Taylor Dance Company Friday at Royce Hall bore the markings of a reasonable retrospective. It made modern dance look not so modern.

This year’s UCLA program actually came close to duplicating a program the company had presented in the same locale in 1978. It included “3 Epitaphs,” a signature piece dating back to 1956, and the newest item on the agenda turned out to be nine years old.

That particular item, “Cloven Kingdom,” has become a ubiquitous repertory staple. The Bat Dor company of Israel danced it here a season ago and, thanks to a scheduling fluke, the Joffrey Ballet performed it Friday night, too, at the Music Center.

The non-capacity audience at Royce was treated to one Los Angeles premiere, “Runes.” Even that work, however, is a decade old, and it has been televised nationally courtesy of PBS.

Taylor, the erstwhile enfant terrible , celebrates his 55th birthday this year. He no longer dances. The somewhat strained performance of Elie Chaib, his successor in “Aureole” (another calling-card vehicle), suggests that a third generation of Taylor dancers already must be looming on the horizon.

If Taylor could not provide the surprise of novelty on this occasion, he did offer the stimulation of four aggressive, invariably insightful, thoughtfully ambiguous choreographic statements.

Most ambiguous, no doubt, was “Runes,” a complex, propulsive Druidesque rite in which a pride of priests and a flock of sacrificial victims, all wearing flesh-colored body stockings and fur patches, play a neat game of changing places. The images overlap tellingly as the 11 dancers explore the kinetic possibilities of attack and release, arousal and suppression.

On a dark stage decorated only by an ever-so-gradually rising moon, Taylor’s primeval protagonists--sometimes blithely ethereal, sometimes fiercely primitive--enact boldly stylized celebrations of sexuality, birth, death and rebirth. The title, not incidentally, refers to secret writings for use in casting a spell.

The ominous, conservative, eminently functional piano score of Gerald Busby was blasted at the audience via tape. So, for that matter, was all the music on the program.

“Cloven Kingdom” as performed by its earthy originators is far less pretty and polite than “Cloven Kingdom” as performed by the balletic Joffrey menagerie. Taylor’s black humor--the message concerns the inevitable dominance of base instincts over sophistication in “civilized” man--makes its impact in both versions. The stresses and balances, however, change drastically.

Joffrey’s dancers are, by definition, an elegant, fragile breed. One doesn’t expect them to paw the earth or flap clumsy wings. Taylor’s dancers, on the other foot, are a muscular, gutsy team. One doesn’t expect them to put on prim airs.

Joffrey gives us spiffy ballet practitioners who, with a little effort, indulge in silly animalistic antics. Taylor gives us wondrous comic athetes who, with a little effort, keep their energy in check for a high-society charade.

Each approach works beautifully. Taylor’s would work even more beautifully with better musical reproduction and with new costumes for the women. Scott Barrie’s 1976 creations are beginning to fade.

Both of the golden oldies on the program looked fresh, economical and provocative. Both attested to the durability of certain fundamental Taylor impulses.

In “3 Epitaphs,” five amiably sinister zombies sporting mirror-spangled space-monkey costumes by Robert Rauschenberg once again elevated bumbling to cool art. They did so with the hot inspiration of a protojazzy New Orleans funeral score, presumably courtesy of the Laneville-Johnson Union Brass Band. (The 50-cent UCLA program magazine provided neither musical identification nor the usual annotations.)

In “Aureole,” first performed in 1962, the virtuoso ensemble proved that Taylor’s barefoot classicism can be witty, lyrical and cheeky, all at the same blissful time.