Behind the painted-on smiles

Nobody in dance makes a bleak Zeitgeist more perversely entertaining than Paul Taylor, whether he’s working to recorded pop hits or Baroque classics -- or both, as in “Acts of Ardor,” a two-part, hourlong PBS “Dance in America” telecast tonight.

Using songs from the Depression, Taylor’s satiric “Black Tuesday” proves to be less about hard times than about show business lies: all those deliriously carefree poor folks (peasants, slaves, street people) forever capering across Broadway stages, movie screens and TV tubes.

Employing a spectrum of painted smiles and as many hoary choreographic cliches as he lampooned in the 1994 “Funny Papers,” Taylor gives us visions of the ever-jaunty homeless, a devil-may-care pimp and an eternally perky abandoned pregnant woman.

But the piece darkens to include expressions of anguish, fury and the numb, uncomprehending bitterness of the concluding “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” solo, strongly executed here by the Taylor company’s Patrick Corbin -- though not with the unforgettable power that Ethan Stiefel commanded in an American Ballet Theatre performance of “Black Tuesday” three years ago in San Diego.

Set to orchestrated Bach, the social panorama “Promethean Fire” distills feelings of vulnerability, desperation and hopelessness that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and other recent events have inspired.

In a series of fragmentary events, we see dancers collapsing as if gunned down, emerging from a pile of bodies, lifting others and rushing them to safety -- but also propelling themselves into increasingly frantic diversionary activities while the music reinforces a sense of dread.

Taylor matches the architectural formality of the music with a number of striking sculptural tableaux, while the technical prowess of his dancers keeps the imagery sharply defined even at high speed. However, the resources of television -- and of TV director Matthew Diamond -- serve the comparatively intimate, character-oriented “Black Tuesday” more successfully than this large-scale, corps-driven choreography. So it’s worth noting that the Taylor company is scheduled to include “Promethean Fire” in its programs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on June 26 and 27.

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‘Acts of Ardor’

Where: KCET

When: Tonight, 10-11; repeats Sunday, 2 p.m.

Featuring: Paul Taylor Dance Company performing “Black Tuesday” and “Promethean Fire”