Paul Taylor Dance Co, Sadler's Wells, London<br></br>Michael Clark, Barbican, London<br></br>Arc Dance, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Adam and Eve are a one-joke wonder

He has been called a genius, a legend, a cultural icon. Time magazine called him "the reigning master of modern dance". But then you expect Americans to dig deep in the pocket of hyperbole to describe a dance-maker whose work, probably more than any other, sums up the American spirit of iconoclasm and adventure. Now 72, Paul Taylor has been at it for nearly half a century, but unlike other Americans of his vintage his work has not become overly personal or obscure. As someone over there neatly put it: if dance is high art, then Taylor is proud to be its blue-collar practitioner. Entertainment is not a dirty word. He wants us to have a good time.

It's his sheer laid-backness that shines from a work like Company B, Taylor's calling-card setting of songs by the Andrews Sisters. He could have gone for the wow-factor. Lindy hop can stretch to any amount of virtuosity. But typically these are steps – Lindy, jitterbug and polka – you can imagine folk dancing at the local hop, the girls swishing ponytails and shirt-waisters, Brylcreemed boys in neat serge slacks. The difference is that the attention to detail in Taylor's dances is as sharp as a GI's trouser-crease, and it's their blithe, open-hearted innocence that wins the audience's hearts.

Yet there's always more to a Taylor dance than meets the eye. And in a clever paradox that innocence – even in a saucy-ish Andrews number like "Oh, Johnny!" – alerts you to the plangent undertow of those jolly, girlie songs, and the troubles they're trying so hard not to address: Pearl Harbor, global catastrophe, the end of the American dream. All this is calculated by Taylor. He presents life in all its rounded contrariness without you ever spotting him pulling the strings.

Taylor's 119 works (and rising) divide roughly into three categories: the lyrical, the psychological and the comical. The new piece, In the Beginning, is firmly in the last camp, but for the first time in my experience of Taylor it doesn't quite come off. Set to glutinous music by Carl Orff (played rather better than it deserves by the London Musici), the piece is a satirical telling of the Genesis story. Yes, for the first 10 minutes it is funny: Eve podding progeny just as fast as they can skid forward on their stomachs between her legs; Adam perplexed when, just as he's about to take a bite from the apple, apples are suddenly everywhere. I admit I got a fit of the giggles when the Almighty launched into an angry solo, smiting everything that moved.

But there is only so far one joke will stretch. In this unholy marriage of Balanchine's Prodigal Son and Monty Python's Life of Brian, the God-wearing-a-tea-towel absurdity ceases to be funny rather quickly. What's more, the piece depends too much on mime and too little on dance motif to be satisfying. I wonder what or whom Taylor is getting at? Perhaps the Bible-belt Texans whose finance commissioned the piece for Houston Ballet. Or could it be George Bush's religious fundamentalism? Happily my personal faith in Paul Taylor was fully restored by Promethean Fire, a piece made only last year and as artfully moulded, as resonant and transfixing a piece of danced art as anything in his career. Still on irony-alert from the previous item, I half expected, as the massive opening chords of Leopold Stokowski's OTT orchestration of Bach's Toccata rang out, Mickey Mouse to pop up saying, "Psst! Mr Stokowski! Over here, Mr Stokowski!" But you soon realise that the dancers' grand poses and scooping, sweeping, intersecting geometries are heartfelt and for real. Never was anything so grand, so essentially serious, and so joyously uplifting. What a good thing that the company and Sadler's Wells found the money for an orchestra to do it justice.

There was a quasi-religious fervour earlier in the week when Michael Clark staged a new show entitled Would, Should, Can, Did – a reference, presumably, to his recent on-off productivity. Billed as a brand new show, a fair proportion of it turned out to be second-hand, and even the genuinely untried felt familiar. This is partly due to the constancy of Clark's collaborators – Brit artist Sarah Lucas, designer Hussein Chalayan, radical rockster Susan Stenger – whose actual input may be small but whose stylistic fixations dominate. Lavatorial jokes, gay bath-house chic and thumping bass guitar monotones now seem inevitable in a Clark show. Even his mum, stripped to her smalls, made a customary token appearance. The chief observable difference between this and earlier extravaganzas is that Clark himself dances less. This is a pity, because he is still, at 41, beautiful, which even the sober street-suit and the pigeon-toed, half-mocking choreography he gives himself can't disguise.

The choreographer Kim Brandstrup has been around just as long as Clark, yet has never had the recognition he deserves for his wonderfully filmic and subtle narrative pieces for Arc Dance. Tackling Shakespeare's Hamlet is his most ambitious project to date: it's hardly a story that obviously lends itself to dance. At least, so I thought until I saw the result that touched down briefly at the South Bank towards the end of its British tour.

How on earth do you deal with such a plot in dance? Ballet famously doesn't do mothers-in-law, let alone usurping regicidal stepfathers. Yet Brandstrup and his stylish company of 11 make it seem easy, thanks partly to the clarity of individual performances, but also to the unusually integrated concept. Music, dance, design and lighting inform one another to such an extent that each element underpins the story's every nuance, twist and check. The only flaw is the lack of a sense of tragedy when Polonius is stabbed behind the arras: Brandstrup had so stripped the plot to its essentials that I'd thought the character had been cut. But that's a minor niggle relative to the production's overall success – a re-fashioning of Shakespeare's play as a moody, nail-biting thriller.

Special credit goes to Ian Dearden's tension-racketing, tango-inspired score and Craig Givens's costumes – you heard the infidelity of Joanne Fong's Gertrude in the corrupt silken rustle of her gown even before you saw it in the deadly avian shapes it made as she spun and wheeled about her courtiers. The pacing of the show is masterly, and its final wistful plot innovation inspired. I had always longed for Ophelia and Hamlet to get it together in an afterlife. And now they have.

jenny.gilbert@independent.co.uk

Paul Taylor: High Wycombe Swan (01494 512000), Tue & Wed; Brighton Dome (01273 709709), Fri & Sat; and touring. 'Hamlet': Eden Court Theatre, Inverness (01463 234234), Thurs; MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling (01786 466666), Sat