Lord of the dance

To say Paul Taylor was enthusiastically received is a bit of an understatement. The veteran American choreographer took a bow at the close of his troupe's opening night and the audience cheered and hollered like teens at a rock gig.

The seventy-something Taylor has been making dances for nearly 50 years (his company celebrates its golden anniversary next year), and you'd think for his two-programme London stint he would have scheduled pieces that spanned his career. Instead, he presented more recent work, much from the 1990s, plus the world premiere of In the Beginning. This retold Old Testament stories (Adam and Eve, Noah, etc) and you had the awful feeling that Taylor might be losing his touch. Beginning felt horribly close to Lloyd Webber's Joseph, with cartoon baddies, Pharaoh-fabulous costumes and choreography that included a lot of clenched fists and birthing shudders. The comedy was surely intentional, but the audience was laughing at the piece rather than with it.

Happily, all else was near-faultless. The first programme opened with Company B, a sun-dappled romp to the tunes of the Andrews Sisters. The girls wore bobby socks and the boys wore chinos, and both were oblivious to the war horrors ahead.

Then came Beginning to Carl Orff, and then Promethean Fire (to Bach), a serious piece of dancing that some have interpreted as Taylor's response to 9/11. Taylor doesn't say, but it's not difficult to read the splintered choreography and dancing shards as references to the Twin Towers, with the pile of bodies the human cost.

The second programme was stronger than the first, probably a better mix, and a better indication of Taylor's scale and scope. It began with Roses, a suite of dances with a pastoral feel, followed by The Word for 11 dancers identically dressed in schoolboy shorts and ties. The adult-children dance with controlled, athletic movements, like junior accountants or trainee soldiers. Into their midst comes a sprite-like woman, maybe a figure of freedom or their passions made flesh. She tries to release them, but her bid for their freedom fails and they end more manacled than they began.

Programme 2 closes with Offenbach Overtures, an exuberant comedy of manners that gently spoofs all our romantic and social muddles. This sort of thing is hardly new (Jerome Robbins made The Concert way back in 1956), but Taylor is as adept at comedy as he is at more serious themes. Especially funny was the two men fighting a duel only to find themselves blowing kisses at one another, and a forlorn lady thoroughly out-done by her more glamourous rival. Taylor is both an assured dance maker and an eagle-eyed observer of human nature.

Programme 1: Thursday and Saturday matinee. Programme 2: Friday and Saturday evening. Box office: 020 7863 8000.

Paul Taylor Dance Company: Programme I