Paul Taylor has been choreographing for almost 60 years. He’s one of our reigning dance geniuses; his masterworks, like “Esplanade” and “Cloven Kingdom” (both from 1977, and both on view during his troupe’s too-brief season at City Center) are enduring pleasures.
His newest projects, by comparison, are trifles. “Three Dubious Memories” has the look of an early Martha Graham work, combining overwrought lovers on the skids with a gray-clad corps of witnesses. Each of three protagonists remembers an event differently, but Taylor takes their predicament less seriously than they do, reducing it to slapstick and stylized beefcake poses. The “choristers” sit in lotus positions or hide their eyes as the leading figures bat each other around.
Another premiere, “Phantasmagoria,” has gorgeous costumes by Santo Loquasto, lighting by Jennifer Tipton and a recorded score of Renaissance music for period instruments like sackbut and shawm. In this mash-up of cultural history, Taylor recreates dancing characters from visual and cinematic art and throws them together onstage — with decidedly mixed results.
The dancers are uniformly terrific, and the rest of the season’s repertory shows them. And Taylor’s fertile compositional skills, in works ranging from funny (“Orbs”) to disturbing (“Speaking in Tongues”) to ineffable combinations like “Company B,” “Promethean Fire” and the intriguing “Polaris” — which surrounds the same steps with two different scores and lighting designs.
