Vail Dance Festival, Often Influential, Delivers Surprises Now: Premieres From left, the jookers Lil Buck, Ringmaster Nugget, Prime Tyme (obscured) and Tip Toe in "Les Hommes de la Légende." VAIL, Colo. - As artistic director of the Vail International Dance Festival, Damian Woetzel has become one of the foremost impresarios of American dance. To cite just one example: Without Mr. Woetzel, the jookin star Charles Riley, known as Lil Buck, might well have remained little known, and Memphis jookin itself would be considerably more obscure. And there are a number of other dancers and choreographers for whom this Vail festival has been an important stage of growth. Monday night's "Now: Premieres" program was characteristic. It presented one Vail premiere and five world premieres; three of these were accompanied by live music. They came from the worlds of ballet, modern dance and jookin - with cross-fertilization abundantly in evidence. The surprise sensation of the evening did not feature the biggest names. "Anywhere on the Road" - a duet created and performed by the modern dancer-choreographer Fang-Yi Sheu and Ron Myles, also known as Prime Tyme, a jookin co-star of Lil Buck - arose from Ms. Sheu's own suggestion, after Prime Tyme made a brilliant impact at last year's festival. Usually she dances barefoot, he in sneakers; for this, they both wore white socks. Music was by Goran Bregovic. Though the piece was only the second on the program, most audience members immediately stood for an ovation when it ended. The work's beauty was that it was a true meeting of minds. The two dancers began by moving side by side, parallel. You felt at once the intelligent kinship of these two dissimilar stylists: sensuously they worked through every part of the foot and torso. The most remarkable sections occurred when simultaneous solos took them into fascinatingly opposed idioms: her virtuoso controlled slowness contrasted with the speed of his fluid upper-body gyrations and then his brisk series of whiplash turns. Memphis jookin also occurred in both "Orbit," a solo for Lil Buck, and "Les Hommes de la Légende," a quartet featuring him; Prime Tyme; Adedamola Orisagbemi, known as Ringmaster Nugget; and Keviorr Taylor, known as Tip Toe. "Orbit," a Vail premiere, had its world premiere in March. Set to a new Philip Glass piece for solo cello (here played by Raman Ramakrishnan), it has a rondo structure, in which movement - rotations of the shoulders, gestures like clock hands, slow adjustments of balance on one foot as if hovering, a line of slow jumps, and more - is reiterated. Lil Buck makes even simple movement enthralling: I recall him gently rocking from side to side and also walking slowly through a very high use of half-toe. What's impressive in "Les Hommes," set to music by Olafur Arnalds, is how all four work sympathetically together while each demonstrates a particular forte. It was enthralling to watch Lil Buck holding a balance on one foot while very slowly raising the supporting foot until it was on point; Tip Toe's rippling muscles and fast footwork; Prime Tyme's gently intense gyrations; and Ringmaster Nugget's spectacular flexing. He hyperextends limbs and seems even to dislocate joints. But the flexing - something all four can do to various degrees - tended to tip the number over into freakishness, and into posing rather than dancing. Monday's biggest choreographic name was Paul Taylor, whose dance company will also perform a whole program here on Thursday. His world premiere was "American Dreamer," danced by six men and six women to music by Stephen Foster. The songs are heard in Thomas Hampson's mesmerizingly mellifluous recordings. The work's chief fault is that, using only five Foster numbers, it was too short. In a nice touch, Santo Loquasto has a supply of costumes and hats at the side of the stage; the dancers change headgear and outfits for each number. The look, a vaguely period one, is American pastoral. Here is Mr. Taylor's latest contemplation of the tension between individuality and conformism, showing his love of form and his sardonic views of society. Sometimes, we see six husbands and six wives; the joke is how each couple is different while ultimately arriving in the same pattern. In the song "Beautiful Dreamer," Mr. Taylor evokes the female Sleepwalker and male Poet of George Balanchine's "Sonnambula." The difference is that Sean Mahoney falls for one sleepwalker (as in Balanchine, he blocks her path in vain, and she steps right over him), then another and next a third. Though these women stay lost in dreams, he keeps losing his heart to them. The other two world premieres were by younger modern-dance choreographers, Larry Keigwin and Brian Brooks, both on ballet-friendly terms and each using guest dancers from New York City Ballet. Mr. Keigwin's "Canvas," to music by Adam Crystal for piano quintet, was intricate, neat and rapturous; Mr. Brooks's "Entanglement," though structurally simpler, was stylistically more experimental. The central charm of "Canvas" was the exciting new freedom that the City Ballet dancers Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild brought to their duets; Lauren Lovette and Daniel Ulbricht (both also from City Ballet) and the seven resident Keigwin dancers were more peripheral, though each made a vivid contribution. This was an intensely pretty piece; its sheer construction was always entertaining. For watching dancers step out of their comfort zone, the evening's best exercise lay in "Entanglement." Set by Mr. Brooks to five Bach Preludes (played by the pianist Cristina Pato onstage), this combined Teresa Reichlen (on point) and Tyler Angle (both from City Ballet) with Jonathan Royse Windham, a Colorado native (big cheers from the local audience) and member of the modern-dance troupe Gallim Dance. With off-balance steps, tips of the torso and sudden changes of direction, Mr. Brooks challenged all three; he gave solos to each. Mr. Angle emerged as the most diverse figure; with Ms. Reichlen he had a true pas de deux. But in a duet with Mr. Windham, he partnered with touchingly tutorial care, as if the younger dancer was wilder but always in need of guidance. In one glorious moment, Ms. Reichlen held a sculptural attitude while falling backward in a slow, slow arc. The sense of adventure was palpable. The Vail International Dance Festival continues through Saturday at the Gerald R. Ford Amphiteater, Vail, Colo.; (888) 920-2787, www.vaildance.org.