What might be called the more ingratiating side of pop ballet is on view this week at the Joyce Theater, courtesy of the Bay Area’s Smuin Ballet, founded in 1994 by the late Michael Smuin, who died last April at the age of 68. Smuin was formerly co-director of the San Francisco Ballet, and his career straddled ballet and show business, as is made abundantly clear by the temperament and character of this troupe.

It is generally preferable for audiences to be educated up about ballet rather than having repertories or style dumbed down, but Smuin’s showman’s instincts and his belief in popularizing don’t cloy or offend. Smuin’s choreography and his repertory don’t pretend to be more than they are; they conform to what might be called educated pastiche, with some inevitable cuteness, but without unpalatable extremes.

And the dancers are personable indeed. Although rather forward in their performance energy, they don’t importune the audience to the degree that this kind of presentation might encourage. They are stylistically and technically true to ballet, which can’t be anything else but slightly aloof and rarefied. Most of the pieces performed by the company use pointe work, and the dancers seemed cannily chosen by Smuin to reflect both an authentically balletic silhouette as well as a certain accessibility. The contours of their bodies are genuinely and recognizably balletic, yet most of the women and some of the men are shorter and a little earthier than is typical of the classical ballet ideal. Technically, the dancers are not spectacular, but they are good, and some are very good.

The program had something of a theme park feel, with Brazilian, Irish, and Japanese exhibits on view. But the opening piece, “Schubert Scherzo,” was rooted in the neoclassical style of ballet. It may have been based on Euro-Russo models, and adapted to American values and rhythms, but in dance parlance, it was “pure,” by virtue of its distance from folk dance and local color. The 10 dancers filled the stage or paired off into couples that quickly supplanted each other. Sometimes all onstage were engaged in various partnering permutations encompassing two or three people. The dance vocabulary was basic but not primitive. The musicality was simple and clear: when the orchestra sounds fortissimo, the stage fills. Smuin interjects occasional notes of novelty or surprise, and unpredictable timings keep us alert.

“Schubert Scherzo” was followed by “Bells of Dublin,” a step/ clog/tap solo danced by Shannon Hurlburt. It was a brief, but competent, example of its genre.

After an intermission came “Shinju,” which is based on an 18th-century play, “The Opening of One’s Heart,” in which adulterous lovers are vanquished by the man’s wife and father-in-law, colluding with rogue and occult forces. There was a bit of an imperialist feel to Smuin’s borrowings here: Somehow he did not get totally inside nor did he totally synthesize his adoption of the appurtenances and formalized conventions of Japanese theater. But here again, Smuin actually was educating his audience, using the frequent stasis of Asian performance modes to hone the audience member’s concentration.

Following a second intermission was the closing piece, “Obrigado, Brazil.” Here the stage was meant to suggest a terrace decorated with palm trees, and when the dancers weren’t dancing, they lounged and talked silently on the sidelines. The suite of dances, mostly for couples with an odd trio, featured supported pointe work flavored by samba and bossa nova. The soundtrack was Brazilian interpreted through classical, jazz, and native made-for-import modes. There were some movement gags: In one duet, the man lifts the woman with her legs splayed, then he has his legs splayed as she turns around and lifts him.

Here the fundamental good taste of the dancers proved needlessly inhibiting. They seemed a bit too concerned that their snake hips not seem corny or low-rent, and they wound up appearing just slightly straitlaced, despite all their smiles and playfulness.

Smuin’s choreography serves its purpose, but as the company moves ahead without him, it would be interesting to see it widen its horizons with some work by other choreographers. These dancers have the aptitude and the enthusiasm to be able to expand themselves.

Until August 18 (175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740).