'Promethean Fire' reviews 'In the Beginning' reviews 'Company B' reviews recent Paul Taylor reviews Ballet'co interview with Paul Taylor more Jane Simpson reviews

This particular season, it's true, offered only one work which has been seen here before, but that was the smash hit Company B, which even the Queen enjoyed when it had its first London showing in 1991. The minute the curtain goes up you know you're back in Taylor-land: as the Andrewes Sisters belt out Bei Mir bist du Schön, the dancers appear in silhouette against the backcloth - perfectly simple at first glance, but look at their feet and you find a hidden complexity which gives you a clue to the whole work. On the surface it's a brilliant but straightforward interpretation of the songs, but look more closely and you see a biting and bitter anti-war story. Today's dancers aren't so perfectly matched to their roles as the originals were - Michael Trusnovec in Oh, Johnny comes the closest - but overall it still works almost as well, and the closing reprise of Bei mir still comes round much too soon.

The second work, In the Beginning, is a Taylor weirdie. Like Company B, it was commissioned for the Houston Ballet, and this was the first performance by Taylor's own company. It's an off-the-wall trip through the book of Genesis, with a multiplication of Adams and Eves annoying a far from benevolent Jehovah, who forgives them in the end in a rather touching scene of reconciliation. On the way some typically Taylor jokes only sometimes come off, mixed with some real emotion - especially in the section called Naked and Afraid. Andy LeBeau starred as the petulant creator, a role which makes you wonder what Taylor himself would have made of it (and just now makes me think that maybe the whole thing could be seen as an allegory), and Silvia Nevjinsky and Robert Kleinendorst get the best of the Adam and Eve sequences. A novelty rather than a lasting addition to the repertory, I'd guess.

Promethean Fire was premiered last year, and word has been filtering across the Atlantic that this one is a major piece. Certainly at first and second sight its effect is stunning. It's a piece for the whole company, set to an orchestration of Bach organ music which in London is played live - possibly the first time the dancers have heard it like that. Leaving aside the emotional implications for the time being, the first section is a dazzling choreographic invention: I don't remember before seeing large-scale manoeuvres of such speed and complexity from Paul Taylor. There's a sequence of intersecting circles that makes you think you're seeing a cast of hundreds. The central section is a long and beautiful pas de deux, and the last is a calmer resolution. Lisa Viola and Patrick Corbin have the leading roles: he's now the company's senior dancer, with the gravitas and authority the piece needs at its centre.

As for meaning, for me it's summed up in the Shakespearean subtitle: 'Fire "that can thy light relume" '. Some great disaster in the first part acts as a refining fire, with the survivors finding a path to acceptance and renewal. In America it's been seen, inevitably, as a response to the events of 9/11, but I don't think that in itself it's so specific. It's an indication of a great work, though, that it will mirror the tragedy or joy of each new audience.