In Paul Taylor’s wide-open “Esplanade,” nine dancers frolic in midair to Bach’s violin concertos in stage-length heats, farcical canons, and merry-go-rounds. The prevailing mood is one of unadulterated joy at being in one another’s company. For good reason, the work has long epitomized Taylor’s optimism as a choreographer, his belief that dance is ultimately a way of being together.

On Tuesday night at the City Center, the Paul Taylor Dance Company launched its 50th anniversary season with a program that included this landmark work as well as a more recent work, “Syzygy,” and the New York premiere of “Klezmerbluegrass.” The three works illustrated the enduring theme of camaraderie and friendship that persists throughout Mr. Taylor’s eclectic repertoire.

The choreography in “Klezmerbluegrass,” for the most part, employs a subtle humor that has a distancing effect on the proceedings (do-si-dos, shuffles and kicks).The dancers simulate a hoedown, variations on the square dance, and circular rounds. The blue-and-pink fishnet leotards the men sport looked mildly aquatic, and the matching halter dresses on the ladies stand out incongruously from the joyful folk dances they are demonstrating.

The shtetl was a complete community in itself, with deeply rooted traditions that often found expression in both music and dance. Mr. Taylor’s sympathy on this account is obvious, and as the tempo slows, the men are left on stage alone. They intertwine outstretched arms, lowering their knees a little in the pattern of a buffering wave. The image evokes landsmen equally distributing the burden of survival and of tradition.

The women, for their part, collect themselves admirably during their ensemble. They swivel their hips serenely back and forth, arms flexed in Occidental sidelong poses (strengthening the mid-century Jewish identification with the Orient). They then join together in a maiden round. The circle unravels with the flirtatious duet between Julie Tice and Michael Trusnovec, ending in the two being carried off in a solemn wedding procession.

Annmaria Mazzini takes a compelling solo as either the secret admirer of the groom or the girl left behind. To piano and clarinet, she stomps in resignation, then spins away insubstantially like a leaf blowing across the street. In the end, the support of her community restores her. She re-enters on the shoulders of two men, and the piece finishes robustly, with a kick-ball change number to a Yiddish melody by the entire village.

Unlike many of Mr. Taylor’s other works, however, only rarely does “Klezmerbluegrass” charm. At one point, the men hoisted onto their backs their female partners, attempting to carry them offstage. Meanwhile, the ladies kicked at the ceiling with giddy trepidation before demurely crossing their knees.The dance could have used more moments like these.

Thrillingly, live music was part of the performance. Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys summoned up a broad geography of Jewish musical folkways, from the nostalgic airs of the Balkans (“Klezmer Waltz” and “Lonesome Moonlight Waltz”) and the wedding songs of the shtetl villages (“Leather Britches”), all the way across the Atlantic to the American heartland (bluegrass, and “Cluck Ol’ Hen”).

“Syzygy” attempts to dramatize in an entirely different way the prevailing harmony of the spheres. The Greek word for “yoke,” “syzygy” is an astronomical term denoting the alignment of three or more celestial bodies, in particular the earth, sun, and moon. The reiterative, percussive melodies of Donald York’s score sustains the jarring, frenetic movements of the dancers. At first, their arms and legs jolt and shudder like live wires, either attracted or repelled by any other body in their proximity.

“Esplanade,” Mr. Taylor’s first work upon retiring as a dancer, still awakens for audiences an exuberance in even the most ordinary movement. The Orchestra of St. Luke’s performed Bach’s “Double Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor,” which increased the thrill of a work that is perhaps Mr. Taylor’s most salient statement on dance. The same music was used to stunning geometrical effect in Balanchine’s politely neoclassical “Concerto Barocco.”

Mr. Taylor, however, replaced the symmetrical movement studies in the ballet idiom with movement studies of his own. Instead of mimicking the music, he sought to redefine it. Beneath the relatively simple gestures like walking and crawling, develops the baroque subtext of summer flings, hormonal swings, and love triangles. But the predominant feeling is one of camaraderie. The dancers’ faces blush with excitement, their arms send out invitations to join in. Small, intimate gestures – a hand around the waist – are amplified by the rest of the ensemble.

After the conciliatory, apologetic shrug by Lisa Viola at the end, the feeling one is left with is the ecstatic joy of movement for its own sake, in all its forms, the not-so-sorry freedom of dancing barefoot to Bach.

Until March 20 (131 W. 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 212-581-1212).