Paul Taylor Does Best What It Does Very Well

As are most of us, Paul Taylor is working hard to get through the ‘90s, a decade in which the arts have suffered so many setbacks that it’s going to seem like the Dark Ages if we ever reach better times.

Covered with honors, recognized as one of the prime innovators of modern dance, this 67-year-old master sends his brilliant, tireless company on the road to dance one-night stands, just as fledgling ballet ensembles crisscrossed the country more than half a century ago, building an audience from nothing.

Those American dance pioneers invariably presented hyper-accessible mixed bills made up of components very much like the ones the 16-member Taylor company offered on Sunday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale: a little breezy formalism, a little swooning romance, plus a froufrou finale with plenty of showpiece opportunities. Forget the mysterious darkness at the core of many of Taylor’s riskiest achievements; these were safe and sane reworkings of very familiar Taylor subgenres.

For instance, Taylor invented the all-American Baroque modern dance romp, and nobody does it better--not Twyla Tharp, not Mark Morris. But his “Brandenburgs,” of 1988, seemed essentially a gorgeously crafted reversal of “Arden Court,” with the women the subject of sunny, juvenile adoration here as the men were in that earlier work. This time, music by Bach energized the five coltish males who kept sweetly encircling and paying homage to Francie Huber, Caryn Heilman and Lisa Viola. However, only Andrew Asnes was allowed to dance as the women’s equal: guiding them, supporting them and often supplying the perfect complement to their dancing just by watching.

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Santo Loquasto dressed everyone in tones of green, with Asnes bare-chested in lime tights but the other men wearing velvet leotards that had decorative strap collars and evoked fancy boys’ school uniforms. Certainly the piece adroitly contrasted their soaring boyish energy with his more grounded masculinity but emphasized the women’s differing facets of femininity, explored at length in central solos.

Because he vanished every time the male corps appeared, Asnes seemed a dream cavalier at first, a projection of the women’s fantasies. However, as Taylor swept everyone into a technically formidable finale built on multiple turns, this last, lingering enigma became resolved. As it happened, Asnes also danced a belatedly resolved enigma of another sort in “Eventide” (music by Vaughan Williams), an atmospheric, uneven 1997 cycle of duets with an unmistakable family resemblance to Taylor’s unforgettable “Sunset.”

Playing an on-the-make opportunist in the third duet, opposite Rachel Berman, Asnes proved the only male immune to the misty, glowing mood of these mating dances, deserting his partner as soon as her conquest was complete. However, Taylor recoupled them, as if nothing had happened, during a problematic recapitulation ensemble at the end, though by that time another couple had become the focus of “Eventide”: Francie Huber and Patrick Corbin.

Smothered by his devotion in one duet, Huber returned to Corbin in another later and was granted true parity: the freedom to provide strength as well as accept it, a place on the ground alongside him rather than in an imprisoning lift across his shoulders.

“Sunset” dealt with soldiers on leave, making the lovers’ partings inevitable; here the mass farewells proved dramatically arbitrary and burdened by music with no dance impetus whatsoever, forcing Taylor into reshuffling the five couples and their signature motifs in a long walking sequence: lines merging and dividing and merging again, with dance and emotion suspended in a slow march toward the fade-out.

High-velocity parody of ballet in general and Frenchified theatrical mannerisms in particular propelled “Offenbach Overtures” from 1995, in which Loquasto dressed everyone in le rouge et le noir--except for Ted Thomas and Heather Berest, who kept appearing in glittering black from head to toe as if they were guest stars.

A cornucopia of silly hats, curling wrists, delirious flouncing, faux elegance and deliberately impacted, spasmodic virtuosity, this typically Taylor compilation of cliches reached its climax in--what else?--a duel. Here Patrick Corbin and Richard Chen See went from deadly opponents to dance competitors, to waltzing partners, to devoted boyfriends in a matter of minutes, while their seconds (Andrew Asnes and Thomas Patrick) grew too occupied with nasty brawling to notice.

Not a creative breakthrough of any sort, of course, but quite sensational in displaying one of the best contemporary companies at full tilt.