As an experiment, try asking anyone who makes up dances how they pick their music. Just try. Like music, dance does not explain itself. Like dance, music cannot tell you what it is doing to you. And like many other dance makers, Paul Taylor, long recognized as one of the great ones, can offer only hints about how he chooses music, what it means to him, what it means to his choreography.

Artfully bashful and self-deprecating, Taylor once characterized himself as having "a tin ear." In truth, though, in the canny eclecticism of his musical choices, Taylor has refined surprise to a high art.

Taylor's range has always been, well, rangy — which is how he was sometimes described when he was a tall, swift, astonishing dancer, first in Martha Graham's company, then in his own, which turned 50 in 2004. The reach of Taylor's musical choices have matched the complexity and speed of his choreography, fulfilled by the remarkable movers he continues to teach, challenge, and inspire.

Taylor has set dances to Handel (Aureole), William Boyce (Arden Court), Stravinsky (Sacre du Printemps/The Rehearsal). He's made dances to the Andrews Sisters (Company B), to the tunes of Harry Nilsson (A Field of Grass), and to "elevator music'' arranged by Donald York (Lost, Found and Lost).

During its annual season (henceforth, they'll only visit every other year) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, March 27-April 1, the Paul Taylor Dance Company will perform three programs. The season includes two new Taylor works. As usual, one's dark and one's light. The dark one, Lines of Loss, is set to an array of music by the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet. The light one, Troilus and Cressida (reduced) is set to Amilcare Ponchielli's The Dance of the Hours, aka Allan Sherman's Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

From his home in lower Manhattan, Taylor, 76, and currently working on a new piece set to Kronos that will premiere in 2008, talked about his approach to dance and music, especially what will be seen and heard at YBCA.

How did you happen to choose the Kronos Quartet for Lines of Loss?

The man who runs Nonesuch [the label for Kronos' Early Music (Lachryma Antiqua)] is on our board. It all goes together somehow. Kronos is very adventurous. They play all kinds of things.

They sure do. Your program lists Guillaume de Machaut, Christopher Tye, Jack Body, John Cage, Arvo Pärt, and Alfred Schnittke.

It's an early Cage. I never thought I'd be using him again. It's rhythmic. This early music is not the way we think of him now, as antimusic.

Is Lines of Loss autobiographical in any way?

I don't do autobiographical dances. Well, you know. One section is a loss of freedom, one a loss of friendship, one a loss of youth. It can be seen in different ways, about different kinds of loss. It's rather formal. Jenny's [Jennifer Tipton] done a beautiful job of lighting it. And Santo [Loquasto] has designed light-colored costumes. With the lighting, it looks rather dark at times. But anyway, I like that.

What was your process in choosing the music?

I had some vague idea, and I just listened to tons of music. I don't know what I was listening for. I thought, this is interesting music. A lot of it was just fooling around, experimenting. And for the dancers, too. Michael Trusnovec hardly gets to move at all, and he's a wonderful dancer. The bells in the music were recorded in France, in an old monastery. It gives the piece a religious tone. And the dancers' costumes have red panels in the back and in front. They lie down on the stage in a red diagonal line. They look pretty. I must say, visually — the way it's lit and the way the figures are spaced across the stage — I'm not ashamed of it.

Are you ever ashamed of a dance you've made?

[Laughs] I try, but I can't make winners all the time!

Then you have a revival, Piece Period, with music by Vivaldi, Telemann, Haydn, Scarlatti, Beethoven, and Francesco Antonio Bonporti.

I had grave doubts about it, but the audience likes it. It's sort of comical. Not the slapstick kind. The comedy mostly is physical, with quick changes in the dynamic, pretty much with the music. I learned one thing: Funny music with funny dancing is a bit much.

But you did do Funny Papers, with novelty songs that are funny, and funny dancing.

That is funny with funny. I guess I didn't learn my lesson!

What's the story behind Troilus and Cressida (reduced)?

Well, it's funny music. Walt Disney used it in Fantasia, with those hippopotamuses in tutus. And it was the music I used for the first piece of choreography I ever did, when I was in this dance club as a student at Syracuse University [class of 1954]. Syracuse commissioned the piece. They gave me an honorary degree, and I choreographed it to go full circle. It's a farce, both in time — it's only eight minutes long — and in artistic value. Troilus and Cressida were sort of lovers, and he was kind of a dope, and she was kind of promiscuous. Instead of a cupid, there are three — because the quote from Shakespeare is "O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!" — with little wings. Santo dressed it beautifully.

Did you have any particular idea about this dance?

I had the idea as a challenge to the dancers. It would make them look very clumsy. I thought it would be fun if they were klutzy and would fall and trip. We started choreographing, and it wasn't working. I woke up and thought, This is a bad idea. And then the idea of Troilus and Cressida just came to me. So I read the play and we went from there. The dancers, Lisa Viola and Robert Kleinendorst, became less klutzy, although they took a couple of pratfalls.

And I did steal something from Disney. The ballerina hippopotamus comes out of a pool, and the hippo blinks her eyes on those [opening] notes. In mine, they're asleep when the curtain comes up, so it's a little farther removed from Fantasia. And Lisa doesn't look like a hippo!

What's unusual about Polaris, which you're showing this season in San Francisco?

I asked Donald York [the company's former music director] to make a dance in two sections. I asked him to make the second different than the first, but to retain the same structure. I thought it would be interesting for the audience to see how music affects things. The music and the attack give the whole thing, to my eye, a different connotation, a different rhythm. It's more interesting the second time. It's played by the same orchestra, but using different instruments.

Do you ever use live music?

We used to all the time, but not now. The damned unions are unfair to people like me. In New York, we perform at City Center, a nonunion house. We got a nonunion orchestra. The union heard about it and picketed. Some of them tried to bribe the musicians to come to rehearsals but not to the show. Two of them did it. We tried to have a meeting to resolve it, but nothing happened. It's strictly a matter of money. It's very expensive to perform in New York City. We always have to raise a lot of money to do it.

I've always enjoyed Profiles, where the dancers are always in profile. It's another repertory piece you're bringing to San Francisco.

The music was by Jan Radzynski. It was a study for Sacre du Printemps/The Rehearsal, which I was working on at the time. We needed something [quickly], so I took a lot of the steps from Sacre and put it together.

And Airs?

Handel sounds like such a nice man. Through his music, I think he's wonderful.

Did you ever study music or play an instrument?

I never did study an instrument, and never learned to read music. I just listen and figure it out myself.

How does that affect how you count?

I count for the convenience of the dance phrase, rather than the musical phrase. I try not to Mickey Mouse too often. I like to interplay. Mickey Mouse means on the music, echoing what the music does. The music goes up the scale, the dancers go up in the air. It's pretty much how Mark Morris and Balanchine work. They choreograph from the music score.

Do you have a favorite instrument?

I love the bass drum. In big orchestras, you hear it under everything. It's the most important instrument. I love to watch percussionists. They're always crazy. Nice crazy.

A favorite composer?

Whichever one I'm working with.

How do you get your music?

Different ways. Total strangers give me music, hand it to me, and I have to thank them, and then it's crap and I never use it!