Quiet moments of purity, expression

Working in a hybrid jazz-modern style, choreographer Pat Taylor has a knack for shaping solos that make you see almost as deeply as she does the unique expressive and technical capabilities of individual dancers.

On the retrospective 12th anniversary program by her locally based JazzAntiqua Music and Dance Ensemble, held Saturday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, her finest work was always the most intimate and subdued. Especially memorable: the expectant stillnesses and soft floating turns of Charles Zacharie’s solo in “Evening, 9:10, 461 Lennox Avenue.” Or the lyric purity and emotional weight of Yvonne Johnson’s extensions in the same excerpt from the suite “Midtown Sunset.”

Taylor’s “Celestial Blues,” with a group of women inventively framing a turbulent duet, artfully sustained its rapt, introspective mood -- but too many of her group pieces settled for flinging technique in the audience’s teeth or attempting radical shifts in tempo and impetus that lost contact with the music.

This split between the choreography and the live jazz led by company music director Marcus Shelby seemed to insist that the audience make a choice -- music or dance -- and music usually won, particularly in pieces such as “Come Sunday” that featured virtuoso vocalist Dwight Trible.

Whether you were hearing a five-member group play Shelby’s own compositions or a band three times that size tackle standards by Duke Ellington, the musicianship stayed so compelling on Saturday that you scarcely noticed when the dancers exited midway through several pieces, ceding the stage to Shelby and company.

The Ellington half of the program included “Blue Pepper,” choreographed by Katisha and Quami Adams as a high-energy ensemble using only the most obvious qualities in the music. Like Taylor’s “A-Train” company showpiece, it proved entertaining but no match for the more insightful Ellington choreographies created by a long list of predecessors -- among them Alvin Ailey.

This anniversary performance featured the return of several former JazzAntiqua dancers now working elsewhere: Tommie Evans, for instance, superbly intense in the family trio from “Odysseus Suite.” A guest appearance by Ballet Kouman Kele West African Dance Company completed the program.