When (after the first of the evening’s irksomely long pauses) the curtain rose on Léon Bakst’s superbly post-Impressionist décor for Nijinsky’s “Afternoon of a Faun,” there was not just applause but a loud whoop too. Another whoop sounded at the end of this short ballet, as the Faun indicated the moment of orgasm, satisfying himself fetishistically with a veil left by a nymph. It’s well known that the audience at this ballet’s 1912 premiere was shocked; 97 years later people need to congratulate themselves on how unshocked they are.  This “Faun” was the Boston Ballet production, which I reviewed in May. But in Tuesday’s performance the two-dimensional beauties of Bakst’s set proved more mesmerizing than those of Nijinsky’s famous bas-relief-like choreography. Altankhuyag Dugaraa still has the right animal magnetism, but he now exaggerates the staccato quality of the Faun’s gestures (as many Fauns before him, notably Rudolf Nureyev, have done). And so the choreography looks far from inevitable. “Faun,” as usual in recent decades (not always), looks like a clever idea, an early example of Director’s Theater imposed on the legato currents of Debussy’s score. The glowing eyelids and lips in the makeup of Lorna Feijóo, the lead Nymph, were another layer of artifice too many.  If you do staccato movements to legato music, the effect is usually funny. Paul Taylor shows this to perfection in the opening phrases of “Offenbach Overtures” (which, after a pause far longer than “Faun” itself, followed). Mr. Taylor’s response to Offenbach catches both the music’s decorum and its mischief. Nothing is serious in his version of the Second Empire, and yet we see — cannot resist — the polite forms and sweep of the social conventions before us.  The daftest episode is the preparation for the duel, in which the seconds start to squabble (in a fit of pique Robert Kleinendorst plucks a chest hair from Jeffrey Smith’s seemingly smooth torso) while the two duelers find that their rivalry turns into mutual infatuation (pivoting in midair to blow each other kisses). It was so good to see the Taylor dancers again, and glorious to hear the Fall for Dance audience give them an ovation even bigger than those they receive in their annual City Center season.  Part 2 began with Ohad Naharin’s 2008 setting of Ravel’s “Boléro,” or rather of Isao Tomita’s synthesized arrangement of it. (The sound of the rhythm section seemed to move around the theater.) Ravel’s music pretty well ensures that any dance set to it will be a hit; my own favorite version, by far, is the ice-dance duet performed in the early 1980s by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, dramatically catching the music’s flow and momentum.  In Mr. Naharin’s version two women, Iyar Elezra and Bobbi Smith, keep close together as they go through peculiar but full-bodied routines. I was puzzled by Mr. Naharin’s decision to set some sections with physical restraint and others with full-out force and speed, but I enjoyed the bizarre-on-purpose vocabulary he gave these women. In one riveting section the two, facing front, keep turning one leg in and out while rotating one arm from the elbow (like swinging a key chain). Next, when they rotate both arms (in opposite directions), they sink and rise again by bending their legs in grand plié. Appealing up to a point, but that point passes long before the music is over.  The program ended (after a pause longer than the “Boléro”) with Savion Glover and the OtheRz in “THE STaRz and STRiPes 4EVeR for NoW.” Tommy James, Patience Higgins, Victor Jones and Andy McCloud were the very welcome live musicians in this homage to John Coltrane; Mr. Glover (the most oblique dance star before the public today, seemingly embarrassed on the few occasions he eventually faces front) arrived to make tap dance the first instrument of this combo, joined later by Marshall Davis Jr. and Cartier Williams.  The virtuosity of all concerned won the biggest of the evening’s ovations. I wish I could have been carried away myself. But I find Mr. Glover’s form of tap to be remarkable without ever being intoxicating. In particular there are aspects of his rhythm that, even while I acknowledge their accomplishment and sophistication, leave me cold. He needs to keep making the same point with differentiations that are mainly academic. Not liking Savion Glover is a kind of luxury: no young dancer has brought such attention and acclaim to the genre of tap in my lifetime. Many leapt to their feet. I could see why, hear why but not feel why.  Fall for Dance continues through Oct. 3 at New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (212) 581-1212; nycitycenter.org.  A version of this review appears in print on September 24, 2009, on Page C1 of the National edition with the headline: Sure Sign of Autumn: A Fling at History. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The audience was near fever pitch throughout Tuesday evening at City Center for the first night of the annual Fall for Dance programs.