A triple tapas plate of Spanish choreography, Ballet Hispanico’s program Tuesday recalled the old joke about Chinese food: An hour later, you are hungry again.
For the opening of its 25th season at the Joyce, the troupe’s most substantial piece was the oldest, Nacho Duato’s 1983 work “Jardi Tancat (Enclosed Garden).” To songs based on Catalan folk tales, three couples skitter and swoop across a stage bordered by thin, bare and weathered stumps.
The lyrics plead for water for parched soil, and the duets’ broken postures and mournful attitudes show the cast’s dashed hopes. Still, clocking in at less than 20 minutes, “Jardi Tancat” wasn’t quite long or involved enough to anchor the evening.
Cayetano Soto’s new “Sortijas (Rings)” is a brief, provocative duet to gravelly songs by Lhasa de Sela. The work is jammed with nervous partnering on a smoky stage — the guy’s in black, the gal’s wearing a top that looks as if it were made out of tinsel.
The stage blacks out several times, and we rediscover the couple in another pose when the lights come up. Finally, the man puts his hands around the woman’s neck as her legs twitch and black paper airplanes fly onto the stage from all directions. Interesting though it is, it seems like the first section of a longer dance.
Last year’s “A Vueltas con los Ochenta (Turning Eighties)” seems to start on the same smoky stage where “Sortijas” left off. Meritxell Barberá and Inma García’s piece looks back at “La Movida,” the cultural revolution in Madrid that followed the fall of fascism. The big hair and black club outfits — tight, ripped tops and short skirts — recall the NYC club scene during the ’80s.
The work is a slice of life at the Disco of Desperation. The dancers enter, listening to their own headphones. Neurotic couplings degenerate into fights, and a strung-out woman twitches in front at the climax. While the piece aims at social commentary, it’s too padded to have much bite — a couple dancing or the group walking across the stage gets stretched past the limits of patience.
So despite a few tasty morsels, Ballet Hispanico’s program needs a little more meat on its bones to satisfy.