Hometown donors for the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet touched down at the Joyce to show their support Tuesday night. The diamond-and-fleece set arrived from the Southwest, hermetically tanned, just in time to brave a Chelsea blizzard. Watching the performance, I understood their fans’ enthusiasm.

The company, a co-venture between the Aspen Ballet School and a presenting organization in Santa Fe, was eager to throw off its regional status and portray a sleek exterior as a modern ballet troupe a la mode. The program includes works by established choreographers Lars Lubovitch (“Fandango”) and Twyla Tharp (“Sinatra Suite,” an excerpt from her “Nine Sinatra Songs”), as well as two rising young choreographers, Trey McIntyre (“Like a Samba”) and Nicolo Fonte (“Left Unsaid”). Each showcases the company’s strong suits: musicality, athleticism, and technique-conscious delivery. The aesthetic is cool, swish modernity.

Nicolo Fonte’s “Left Unsaid,” which made its New York premiere Tuesday, is a fine case in point. Performed to a compilation of Bach’s violin concertos, it consists of six separate but related movements. Mr. Fonte places his dancers in various proximities, deftly mapping their attractions and subsequent evasions through innovative blocking, dynamic partnering, and a felicitous use of props – specifically, chairs. The piece opens with two men in black suits sitting down and facing the audience. Compulsively, they vogue – responding to the music, then gathering themselves together.

When Katie Dehler enters in a powder blue unitard, she strikes out independently in front of them with long legged jabs. Ms. Dehler admits a weakness for one man in particular, allowing herself to go limp as he throws her over his shoulder like a wet towel; then she slinks out from between his legs. In the next section, the men sit motionless in the background. Three women unflinchingly execute a witty floor pattern in front of them. At intervals, they lean on thin air, elbows out. Finally, the men stand up, take off their coats, and lie down, offering their heel for an armrest.

Todd Elmer’s lighting design heightens the drama of the flirtation: a simple, black horizon rises and lowers in increments, reflecting the interactions on stage. At one point, Elizabeth Johansen-Martinez lies down on three men. They hoist her up; the horizon rises with her. Moments like these increase our sympathy for these agile but cold bodies. In the arpeggios of the final section, a duet includes domestic gestures; real intimacy may be developing after so much airbrushed stylization. But each partner is always about to make an escape.

In “Left Unsaid,” the dramatic tension always remains under the slick pretense of abstraction. Just as the chairs serve as architectural supports, so the body is viewed primarily as an armature for further movement. Mr. Fonte prizes the classical virtues: cool, flexible leg extensions, an erect spine. His choreography aims for a geometric emotionalism, but this feat is difficult to pull off persuasively. Although he is endlessly resourceful in his choreography, the dancers are often stuck doing individual poses.

Mr. Lubovich’s “Fandango,” a pas de deux, offers a more fluid series of elegant combinations. To Ravel’s “Bolero,” the piece begins with a quiet intensity. Seated dancers evoke bedroom intimacies. Holding each other, they find mutual balance, as if in a boat. As the music gains momentum, so do the movements of the couple. Formally, Mr. Lubovich revisits the same physical themes throughout, arresting them on several planes as they stand and lie down again.

Both Twyla Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite” and Trey McIntyre’s “Like a Samba” find their inspiration in popular songbooks. Ms. Tharp uses Old Blue Eyes himself; Mr. McIntyre, the famous bossa nova records by Astrud Gilberto. They also gave the company an opportunity to display theatrical gusto, which was sorely lacking in the blase expressions of “Fandango” and “Left Unsaid.” For all the dancers’ technical skill, one wanted to light a fire under their feet to get a reaction.

“Like a Samba” powerfully avails itself of Michael Mazzola’s lighting design. Pairs of dancers are restricted to large checkers of light, capturing the vanity of the samba. The women wear white halter dresses, the men white suits. The dancers confidently swivel and groove before executing balletic moves with birdlike adroitness. In the final number, isolated solos allow each dancer to vivaciously burst out of their individual checkers. They move as a group under a tangerine sunset.

In “Sinatra Suite,” Brooke Klinger and Seth Delgrasso share a cinematic medley below a starlit sky. Behavioral flourishes dominate the piece between each song. Mr. Delgrasso takes off his jacket to the B4 organ of Sinatra’s late 1960s “That’s Life,” does a drunk little soft-shoe to “One More for the Road” – all while chewing a stick of gum. He captures wonderfully the insolence of the Rat Pack.

The audience was enthralled by the end, especially the home team in the middle orchestra. They made their presence felt with shouts, whistles, coos – nearly everything but a fog horn and a fight song. Certainly they saw to it that each member of the company received birds-of-paradise in their bouquet.

Until March 13 (175 Eighth Avenue, between 18th and 19th Streets, 212-242-0800).