It is 40 years since Mikhail Baryshnikov first danced, as a member of the Kirov Ballet, in the West. Today people arrive at a Baryshnikov performance with layers of ideas about his fame and his past. He gives them beautifully elegant moves that include those ideas while putting them into proportion. His manner is unassuming, modest, very charming. It is easier now to see the marvelous grace and phrasing he brings to basic steps, though his expressiveness often seems more complex than ever. The program called 'Unrelated Solos,' currently at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, features three male dancers, five choreographers and six solos. Steve Paxton, whose stage career goes back even further than Baryshnikov's, appears in the world premiere of his own 'The Beast.' David Neumann presents his 'Dose' (1996) and 'Tough the Tough (redux)' (2006 and 2010); and at Wednesday's performance he won at least as much applause as anyone else. Baryshnikov's first two solos are New York premieres. He spends most of Benjamin Millepied's 'Years Later' (to recordings of music by Philip Glass and Akira Rabelais) in front of films of himself. The relation between Baryshnikov live and Baryshnikov filmed seldom gets beyond the cute. At one point, footage of him in his teens practicing ballet steps in the classroom is edited so that one multiple pirouette goes on revolving forever, and the live Baryshnikov shrugs. But there is another piercing moment, when the live one has been sketching some sharp but simple moves and then turns to contemplate his younger self. It's like the scene in Tom Stoppard's play 'The Invention of Love' when A.E. Housman, at the end of his life, finds himself in conversation with the undergraduate he once was, to whom he says, 'I'm not as young as I was. Whereas you, of course, are.' Alexei Ratmansky's 'Valse-Fantasie' begins with Baryshnikov checking his appearance in an unseen mirror (neatly evoked by a rectangle of Jennifer Tipton's lighting on the floor). A radio-like voice tells the biographical story behind Glinka's 'Valse-Fantasie,' about his infatuation with a woman, followed, years later, by his discovery that he has no feelings for her. Baryshnikov listens. When the music plays, he find himself tracing threads of the story, inhabiting it, becoming both man and woman. There's ballet mime: I love you! Me? I'm proposing marriage! Marriage? Baryshnikov gives these gestures a peculiar emphasis, as if to add, look at me now, remembering all that. At times, even when dancing, Baryshnikov seems to be miming or rehearsing; he's playing the modern character who's playing Glinka who's playing his own younger self. Elsewhere, he gives us dance in memory: That's how this used to go. These different fragmentary views of the music come and go in a collage of breakless fluency. The evening ends with Susan Marshall's 'For You,' a work in progress. Baryshnikov starts simply, compellingly. But he needs to perform for someone. So he brings successive members of the audience, seats them and dances for each one. Or does he? In one sequence he presents one sumptuous arc of his arm up, over and down. What began as a public act ends as a private one. If the dancer needs different audiences, it's to keep finding new aspects of himself. Neumann's 'Dose' is a sketch of an old-smoothy jazz number to Tom Waits music that springs a surprise with a fleeting somersault hint of break dancing. Its legato current is a particular feat. 'Tough the Tough (redux),' set to a Brian Eno text, is wrier, sometimes illustrating the words (as when scratching himself), sometimes detaching himself from them. Chairs are involved. 'Unrelated Solos,' despite the marvelous range of expression achieved by Baryshnikov, would be too strong on charm were it not for 'The Beast.' Paxton delivers this like the Ancient Mariner. His face shows its years; he moves to an unnamed recording of noises that sound like drips or bubbles. There's no attempt to express or suggest anything except what he's doing; he makes no effort to be conventionally lovely. Often he stands in one spot, with his feet parallel to each other or with toes turned in, his knees bent, for long periods. His torso twists; his head moves; he holds out his arms in changing curves and lines. He sticks his butt out; he angles his head sideways. With legs wide apart, he takes small steps backward. He bends to touch the floor and slowly pulls his torso back up to vertical. He keeps his shoulders hunched up while he slowly turns; he leans back; he drops his shoulders. Those are just some of the facts. Paxton is so stark and so uncompromising about them that they become important. The energy isn't high; at a couple of points my attention briefly wandered. But the stern, gnarled objectivity with which 'The Beast' shows us unpretty and anti-virtuoso movement makes this the evening's most powerful event. 