White Oak Dance Project, Sadler's Wells Theatre, London

The postmodern prince

By now audiences – bar only those in the Antarctic – know that Mikhail Baryshnikov the ballet prince has given way to the modern or postmodern democrat. For his White Oak Dance Project's latest visit, he brought a programme that almost represented a short history of American modern dance. The chronology travels from the rather dated plastique of Erick Hawkins's Early Floating (1961) to Lucinda Childs's present-day minimalism, which accumulates patterns within a restricted vocabulary of movement.

In between came Trio A by Yvonne Rainer, who ignited postmodern dance in the 1960s with her manifesto of "no to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and makebelieve". (She might have added "no to punctuation".) Trio A has undergone several revisions since its creation in 1966 and this version, Trio A Pressured No 3, starts with two duos in silence, before the company assembles for an upbeat ensemble recapitulating previous motifs to "In the Midnight Hour".

Before that there had been touches of humour, not so much in the first austere duet for Jennifer Howard and Rosalynde LeBlanc, with its pared-down movement, but in the second, where an astonished-looking Baryshnikov bends and circles round to scrutinise Raquel Aedo's self-absorbed dancing – a postmodern spectator, perhaps, studying scrupulously non-theatrical dance.

Early Floating's presentation still belongs to a former age of theatricality, but the content is as plotless and stubborn as any postmodern dance. It sorts out the men from the boys in the audience and Lucia Dlugoszewski's plucks, rattles and isolated notes for "prepared" piano don't make things any easier.

Baryshnikov's loyalty to a late, revered friend who didn't exactly become a household name as choreographer is touching. But what should we make of all those entrances and exits and carefully arranged antique poses, like figures on Greek vases? The cast's single woman, Emily Coates, is a marble presence, striking perfectly controlled balances in a long solo, interrupted by more entrances and exits from the men. Baryshnikov, in Hawkins's original role, gets an equally long solo, with a series of weird two-footed jumps in which the skipping rope seems to have withered away over the millennia.

But, of course, Baryshnikov is largely why people come to see such an uncompromising programme. And for all the individuality of the eight other dancers, he does dominate, looking leaner and fitter than any 54-year old should. He has transmuted his classical technique into a dance that may seem simpler, but to which he brings his rich artistry. Less is certainly more, when it is underpinned with linear perfection and nuances of texture and timing.

All this comes into the spotlight in the evening's two best pieces: Lucinda Childs's Largo and Chacony. Largo, a brief solo for Baryshnikov, is solemn yet relaxed, low-key yet mesmerising, the demotic pacing and turning delving into Corelli's music with wonderful lucidity. It makes programming sense to open with this and then close with Chacony, which itself ends with another solo for Baryshnikov.

In recent years Childs has been infusing her minimalism with something approaching emotion. The group dances throw up images of counterpoint and unison but also evoke atmosphere. And when Baryshnikov appears, he not only matches Britten's musical structures, he also might be saying something about himself. Alone, throwing his body through the air, he is both a classicist and a modernist – a democratic prince.