In a time when the ballet world seems to be constricting, Company C Contemporary ballet, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an encouraging exception. Launched just three years ago, the troupe has expanded quickly. It performs throughout California, commissions new works and, in 2005, offered its 12 dancers a 28-week contract. The dancers, recruited mainly from regional companies, perform with the polish and élan usually seen in a much more established troupe. Their energy and skill well suit the sophisticated repertoire choices made by Artistic Director Charles Anderson, a former New York City Ballet dancer.

For its fall season in San Francisco’s Cowell Theater, Company C performed Partly Cloudy, a world premiere by Paul Taylor Company alumnus Patrick Corbin. Set to an electronic score with interjections of rock and choral music, it had a high-voltage athleticism and restless pace. The dancers started in 10 chairs lining the back and sides of the stage, and rose one by one to move in rapidly shifting groups, with an inwardly focused sangfroid. Jenna Maule, a compact, blonde dynamo, attacked a solo that was much about geometrically precise pointe work as speed.

Corbin’s early works had a Taylor-esque feel, but Partly Cloudy is all his own-both more balletic and slicker in style. Toward the end, the music’s volume increased to rock concert levels, and the woman in from of me put her coat over her head.

The dancers bit into Twyla Tharp’s 1971 Eight Jelly Rolls with aplomb, seeming to relish the quirky, cute shoulder and hip swivels, jazzy mannerisms and pratfalls. Alexis Drabek, tall, elegant and loose-limbed, tossed her legs up earside with ease and nailed the physical comedy. Tharp’s detailed and intricate choreography was carefully executed and vividly performed, especially by Drabek. The music was a problem again. Amplification and the raspy sound system made some of the dancing seem comparatively small, as if the dancers couldn’t entirely fill its volume.

Two Anderson works created earlier this year completed the program. In Under Glass, pools of light illuminated different-sized groupings of dancers behind a sheer scrim. Here the dancers negotiated fast partnering and Forsythian off-balance extensions. The choreography sometimes matched the repetitiveness of a percussive score. At other times, Anderson played with opposites – a body clenched in arabesque promenade released into a floating pirouette, and a man flipped his partner in a round arc only for her to slither to the floor like a snake.

After such engaging programming, Anderson’s Celestial Soda Pop lacked fizz. It was meant to be pretty, which it was, save for the men’s purple cap-sleeved leotards. But for the first time the dancers looked weary, and a few ragged edges appeared in the lifts.

Even so, the troupe’s momentum propelled it forward – just as it has propelled Company C from a pickup troupe to a Bay Area fixture in a very short time.