Dancing on The Subway

"Jump!" commanded one of the slithering sybarites populating Alvin Ailey's "Night Creature" on Friday night at City Center. "How high?" was the body-language response of one of the men who were in hot pursuit. Their exchange is the logical extension of the doggy-paw hand jive that swirls throughout the piece, an homage to the vocabulary of Broadway and Harlem routines of the sepia years. Ailey dexterously and lightheartedly mixed the archival steps and gestures with ballet and concert-dance modern. Created in 1974, the work was perhaps an effort to show us how far the bad old days had been transcended — and to say how much fun there was in the old routines, here accompanied by symphonic Duke Ellington.

The tart repartee of "Night Creature" seemed to pave the way for the New York premiere of Camille A. Brown's "The Groove to Nobody's Business," which came a little later in the program. Ms. Brown's "Groove" takes place on a subway platform, where a slew of contrasting types wait and wait for the subway to come. As they pass the time, their discontent mounts and almost turns existential — in a way that might be a wink at "Waiting for Godot."

All different ages and socioeconomic profiles are represented, fellow travelers thrown together by chance, sharing, perhaps, only one goal: to step onto the train and get to where they want to go. Matthew Rushing is a disheveled and disaffected member of the white-collar working class. Glenn Allen Sims has risen higher on the corporate ladder and gets rather sniffy as he peers down at what he may consider the lower orders. Renee Robinson is a woman who's a little bit lost and a little high-strung. Hope Boykin is a swaggering type who doesn't hesitate to throw elbows and attitude around. Guillermo Asca and Linda Celeste Sims are teenage boyfriend and girlfriend, mooning and flouncing and asking to be looked at. "Groove" shows us how they all annoy each other and encroach on each other's spaces, thus activating magnetic poles of attraction and repulsion.

In orchestrating her nine-member cast, Ms. Brown has made informed decisions about how long to develop an episode, how many balls to keep bouncing in the air at any one time, and how to dissolve the anecdotal observation into pattered movement. The straphangers all sit on the platform bench, drumming their legs in restless unison so that they resemble a giant centipede, or they shoot individually into the air in syncopated frustration. Their fidgety, impatient gestural cadenzas merge and accumulate into flailing hip-hop symphonies.

"Groove" is an expert orchestration of controlled chaos as well as an astute barometer of how easily things can really get out of control. The soundtrack shifts Ray Charles to contemporary composer Brandon McCune, moving from foot-tapping rhythms to jazz atmospherics. In its own way, "Groove" proves as fast, furious, and combustible as the quotes from vintage revue sketches and nightclub routines in "Night Creature."

Through December 31 (130 W. 55th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-581-1212).