Paul Taylor enjoys bringing high culture to its knees, or even better, making it slouch and drag its arms over the earth like an orangutan. In the three pieces performed Saturday night, “Cloven Kingdom,” “Last Look,” and “Offenbach Overtures,” Mr. Taylor deflated pretension with a smile and scorned artifice with a wink.

“Offenbach Overtures” pokes fun at the highfalutin’ world of chandeliered ballet. Pomp and circumstance is emblazoned with sarcasm. A drumroll heralds a company of painfully upright court attendants. The women wear kitschy outfits in sore-thumb red made from flocked satin; the men are dressed up as toy soldiers and sailors.

As a cast they execute a series of grandstanding combinations, but partners run into each other, forget steps, proceed haltingly – all with straight faces. Heather Berest and Orion Duckstein are hilarious in their roles as the endearingly inept villains in the “Die Rheinnixen Overture.” And Lisa Viola’s face, as she sits doll-like on a soldier’s knee, is priceless: She convincingly becomes the equivalent to Offenbach’s mechanical Olympia.

Richard Chen See and Sean Mahoney were captivating as duelers in the “American Eagle Waltz” section. They fence with pointed fingers, then give each other the finger. The rivalry leads to comic travesty, and they discover they have been repressing feelings for each other all along. While their underlings continue to fight, they blow kisses.

The choreography maintains the equally shy and vainglorious air of young boys putting on an impromptu masquerade for their parents. They exaggerate off-kilter turns, then have their try at dancing modern. “Offenbach Overtures” is less dynamic than “Cloven Kingdom,” but Annmaria Mazzini, her hair teased beyond recognition, gave an energetic, salty performance in the concluding section.

“Last Look” turns away from conceits and trains the viewer’s attention inward to a paranoid fantasy of alienation. Laughter stops as we find a pile of uniformed bodies at the center of a theater of mirrors. Drowsily they roll off each other. At the bottom, our protagonist emerges. He shivers violently as if by electric shock, before lashing out with heel kicks and hard knocks.

The interaction between dancers suggests they may be different versions of the same person. But it looks as if we are looking at foreign bodies invading a person’s mind. The jerky movements of the dancers resemble doubts and pathologies that infect a brain like a virus. Michael Trusnovec gives a highly charged performance in his duet with his reflection. A portrait of frustration, he slowly hints at peace of mind.

Asked to define modern dance, Mr. Taylor once extemporized that it was like ballet, “but uglier.” What unifies these three works is Mr. Taylor’s cruel delight in our primitive side. It certainly may not be pretty, but even as these works humble our idea of sophistication and culture, they ennoble our fears – the ugly, vulnerable kinetic animal still covered in fur.

Until March 20 (130 W. 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 212-581-1212).