Movements in Jazz, with Pollock and Coltrane

Lar Lubovitch opened his two-week run at the Joyce Theater last Tuesday night with a program underlining his abiding interest in jazz.

But my mind kept running to two unrelated dance responses to jazz music: “The Spirit Moves," Mura Dehn's miraculous history of black social dance, and the scene from the Charlie Brown Christmas special, when the kids bust out with wonderfully peculiar solos. These films--one depicting virtuosic performers, the other animated--couldn't be more different. Yet both possess what Mr. Lubovitch's polished reaction to jazz painfully lacks: a certain compelling messiness or strangeness, spontaneity (often as a metaphor for freedom) and the celebration of individuality within a larger group.

Mr. Lubovitch creates pleasant works that show off his deep ties to the modern tradition. He makes his dancers look good, and they in turn look as if theyre having a lot of fun tearing through his physically taxing dances (though the plastered-on smiles grow old fast).