When a dance can still take your breath away with its subtle beauty after 28 years—revealing new and deeper nuances—it’s fair to call it a classic. That was the impression left by last Sunday’s stirring performance of Paul Taylor’s Sunset, which led off a notably strong program. In this 1983 work, not only do all the elements—music, choreography, design—seamlessly and eloquently complement one another, but Taylor achieves something truly transcendent. We see six soldiers (in khakis and red berets, no specific time or location is suggested) encountering four sweetly flirtatious women in a setting that suggests a park on a balmy day. But somehow this elegiac, layered work, set to serene string compositions by Edward Elgar, carries us off into a disturbing realm of dreams and memories.

A repeated motif of the men reclining evokes the battlefield wounded; the women transform into ministering angels. Images of birds in flight against the leaf-dappled sky of Alex Katz’s subtly perfect set recur. Both women and men are borne aloft, bodies tracing an arc through the air. A section in which the men form a staircase, a pathway and seat for Annmaria Mazzini to gambol without ever touching the ground proves both playful and wistful. Returned to earth, she curves her way lyrically away. The men all leap across the stage on both directions, evoking a confused flock of birds in flight. A moment later, they are plunged into the work’s heart-rending central section, set to plaintive loon calls. Images both dire and beautiful overlap as each of four men is shadowed and guided by a woman. When the loon sounds give way to Elgar, it is for a summation both transcendent and inevitable. A piercingly lyrical solo by Eran Bugge cannot forestall the men’s fate. Their momentary diversions ended, they head off into the unknown.

Sunset ends with a magnificent, yet subtle, final image. One of the many aspects to admire in Taylor’s repertory is how masterfully he crafts his work, including coming up with the perfect, if often surprising, final moment. Also fascinating to observe is how recurrent movement motifs and images recur in different works, making a strikingly different impression in each context. There are definitely recognizable “Taylorisms” one can spot across the repertory, but he transforms them through musical emphasis or dramatic context.

Watching three programs during the first week of his company’s City Center season offered the chance to see nine works—half of the generous repertory being performed. These included one of the season’s two premieres: Brief Encounters, a sensuous, surprising interpretation of Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite that so many amateur pianists have learned to play. In 1977, Taylor used this score (along with other Debussy selections), in its piano version for Images, a work that alluded to ancient Minoan cultures. Less ritualistic, the new dance at times evokes innocents at play, yet the minimal black costumes are hardly suggestive of innocence. At first viewing, its clarity of design and elegant patterning—lots of curving body shapes and circling trajectories—provide unaffected pleasures, but not (yet) the deeper resonance that Taylor’s dances often provide.

A highlight of the first week was one of the oldest works being offered, a revival of Public Domain, created in 1968 and not performed here since 1981. It is a riot of explosive, witty, unpredictable movement non-sequiturs performed with incredible vigor and dynamism to a hilarious collage score (by John Herbert McDowell) that ranges from marching bands to Arabic music to The Nutcracker to snippets of just about everything else imaginable that is in the public domain.

With its endearing elements of the absurd (a woman dances waving a tiny flag, a man crosses the stage using a crutch, a ball periodically rolls across of its own accord) and the constant shifting of gears, Public Domain proceeds at its own giddy, inevitable pace. The movement is so robust and variable—goofy one moment, then bordering on ballet virtuosity another—that the dancers’ aplomb as they perform it becomes heroic. (See for yourself at its only other performance, Saturday evening Mar. 6.)

Another work from the 1960s, the devastatingly anarchic Scudorama, confirmed the powerful impression it made when revived last year, and is a revelatory template for many other subsequent Taylor dances. The dances mentioned here are just a sampling of the rich Taylor repertory, including a second premiere, Also Playing, on view at City Center. The current roster of dancers is performing with particular verve and expressiveness, and they also have cohered into a true ensemble.

Paul Taylor Dance Company

Through Mar. 14, City Center, 131 W. 55 St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-581-1212; times vary, $25-$135.