Joan Acocella looks at two modern masters. Paul Taylor is seventy-two, “and he has made more than a hundred dances, but one dance keeps reappearing. It goes like this: The dancers are a kind of community (we’re not sure what kind), and they perform maneuvers that they are very earnest about, and which look like rituals. This is somewhat comic—they think they’ve found an explanation of life. It is somewhat tragic, too, for the same reason. Mark Morris, on the other hand, is more abstract. “It has always been something of a mystery how Morris, who is a very sophisticated artist, and largely an abstractionist, became such a favorite with the public. One reason is that he’s often funny. Another is that he’s clear.”