NEW YORK, NY.- At this moment, the Paul Taylor Dance Company is both transformed and not. Its founder and choreographer, Taylor, died in 2018, but what remains, despite a new generation of dancers, is fundamental: the supple strength of the Taylor dancing body.

There are the curving arms and the stretched spine, the powerful thighs and the deeply contracted torso that releases and spirals through a sinewy back. No two Taylor dancers are alike, but they all have something in common. “Dancers, good ones, know how to make the most of their short shining times,” Taylor wrote in “Private Domain,” his autobiography. “When they are onstage, there is no waste, no moment of halfheartedness.”

In the first three programs of “Taylor: A New Era,” the company’s current season at Lincoln Center featuring live music by Orchestra of St. Luke’s, that sense of meeting the moment is richly apparent. These dancers, now under the artistic direction of the former company member Michael Novak, move with the same gusto and grit as those who came before. But they are also more natural, more committed to executing choreography with a straightforward sense of purpose. At Taylor, it is through the dancer that you see the dance. “We are here because of them,” Novak told the gala crowd Wednesday night, “and how they share their souls through their art.”

It’s a wonderful group, with dancers capable of embodying joy and pathos, all the while equipped with unassuming virtuosity. No hesitation. No waste. But how does this era of dancers react and respond to new choreographers? On Wednesday, Lauren Lovette presented her second premiere as the company’s resident choreographer: “Solitaire,” a work for 13 set to Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1.

Lovette may be a former principal with New York City Ballet, but she isn’t tethered to that form. Her work, like Taylor’s, has flow, sweep and sculptural plasticity; it can be raw and weird. In his dances, Taylor was all about showing the light and the dark; Lovette has that down.

“Solitaire,” with the subtitle “a single gem set alone,” is about a loner (John Harnage) who experiences a transformation and ultimately achieves a sense of peace — at least as much as he, or anyone, is capable of — with the support of dancers. The reason for his struggle remains a mystery, but his isolation is real.

“Solitaire” starts out with dancers motionless, leaning toward the center of the stage where a large structure hovers at the back. Like an oversize pendant, it fills the space, its thick frame revealing the simple shape of a cross with lines delineating stained glass. Created by Santo Loquasto, who also designed the costumes, the set is handsome yet hulking, stately but oppressive.

In the dance’s opening movements, Lovette generates images of swirling bodies, with the vivacity and grounded power of Matisse dancers as they pick up speed with hiccuping steps that morph into runs, small leaps and spins. As groups converge and splinter off, dancers roll to the floor, pop back up and support one another before being swept up in another wave of undulating motion.

And then there is stillness. Harnage stands alone on a darkened stage, amid a forest of ropes — soft sculptures made of cotton welting — that dropped like curtains. The inside edges of his feet are pressed together as his torso wiggles and his knees buckle. In this powerful, poetic lament, Harnage’s bare-chested body seems to prickle as it bends, wobbles and rights itself again. An arabesque performed with a wind-milling arm contrasts with the looseness of his collapsing spine.

When the group returns, Harnage — with a glance and a reach — finds a connection with another dancer, Lee Duveneck. Gradually, the setting becomes brighter, more playful; Eran Bugge jostles Harnage’s arm, and a childlike abandon takes over. The set transforms to reveal a silhouette of distant, rolling hills while the stage becomes more golden, which gives the caramel-colored costumes — including pants with a wisp of a skirt for the women and slim pants and white tanks for the men — a lift. For all its details, this dance, with lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker, can look too beige. The action gets muddy, blurring the steps.




But in the music’s closing Fugue, “Solitaire” comes to life as Lovette matches the music’s joy and speed that leads, for Harnage, to a kind of awakening: When the last of the dancers spins into the wings, leaving him behind, he may be alone but he’s not abandoned. Lovette’s musicality taps into a feeling, an idea that seems autobiographical: that a loner can find hope when dance is the balm.

The message of the company’s other premiere, Amy Hall Garner’s “Somewhere in the Middle,” is mainly unabashed joy. Performed Thursday to a selection of jazz music, Garner’s offering is as bubbly as a warm bath: Arms fly into the air, dancers roll across the floor and then lift off again, smiling recklessly as if there were no tomorrow. It’s like jazz day at the beach.

Donald Martiny’s set — hanging brushstroke pieces that show dimension through the thick, sometimes bumpy paint texture — changes in color and shape throughout the work, matching the liveliness of Mark Eric’s bright costumes (briefs and bras overlaid with transparent fabric). Do I love the white brushstrokes that are painted on them? Not at all. It looks like a finger-painting accident.

Although it’s choreographed mainly for an ensemble, “Somewhere” features plenty of moments for individual dancers to shine. To “Perdido,” Garner captures Madelyn Ho’s crisp radiance and razor-sharp speed; in a solo to “When Your Lover Has Gone,” Jada Pearman, fearlessly bounding into the air, was a little too happy to be single. But what preceded it, “Lucky to Be Me,” was the exception to the exuberant mood.

For that one, Maria Ambrose and Devon Louis switched out of their coral and orange costumes and into darker, more body-skimming designs; their duet was more somber than sensual, like a couple illustrating Garner’s title: Along with happy beginnings and endings, there can be difficult middles where the foundation, the truth of a relationship, is tested. But mostly “Somewhere in the Middle” raced along at a hectic pace, mirroring musical notes with frenetic footwork and an abundance of floor work that, on such a large stage, was difficult to read.

Like other dances on the program, it could have used a more intimate house than the David H. Koch Theater, which can feel too big even for some of Taylor’s works. But “Scudorama” (1963), an eerie, sinister look at “the nearly soulless,” as a quote from Dante stated in the program, was an exception. It can fill a large stage. It’s majestic.

Here, Alex Katz’s set and costumes — there are beach towel shrouds, floating clouds and brilliantly colored unitards — create a spectacular union with the dancers’ disjointed, fragmented bends and jerks. Particularly stunning was Ambrose — so vacant in spirit and so unpredictable in the jagged way that she is able to drop her weight. But all the dancers, including Louis, who becomes more grounded and dynamic each season, and Kenny Corrigan, a persuasive newcomer, brought the work’s images and themes of death, futility and emptiness to dancing life. “Scudorama,” more than a piece of dance history, is all-too relevant. “Scud,” as Taylor referred to it, may not be the world we want, but it’s the one we have.

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Paul Taylor Dance Company

Through Nov. 13; davidhkochtheater.com

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.