For dance fans huddling in away from the storm Tuesday night, the Pascal Rioult Dance Theatre at the Joyce provided a cozy harbor. Mr. Rioult’s two remounted hits, the duet “Black Diamond” and the effervescent “If By Chance,” consoled the soggy viewer with charming, geometric patterns. But Mr. Rioult also presented two new works, the faux-hip “Exp #1” and the faux-religious “Symphony of Psalms,” and both, despite their technical cleanliness, fell into deep ruts at the conceptual level.

In past visits, Mr. Rioult’s reimaginings of classics such as “Firebird” and “Bolero” have demonstrated his ability to think around established norms, to shake our preconceptions about musical classics. In “If By Chance,” for instance, he uses Jacques Loussier’s jazzy reimagining of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto #23,” and the slung hips and shimmying carriages of the dancers mirror the music’s playful riff on classical elegance. But if Mr. Rioult isn’t busy undermining a cliché, he has a tendency to create one.

Only the kitchen sink is safe in “Exp #1” — everything else, from isolated body parts in a stream of light to a quote from hip-hop’s “cabbage patch,” makes it into the mix. Set to a mix of thumping techno by the electronic music group Autechre and Bach’s “Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord,” “Exp #1” lives up to its name. Surely this experiment was tried long ago, as it seems a bit late to be discovering pop-and-lock choreography, a synthesized drum-machine, and armies of front-facing, underwearclad dancers.

Luckily, the featured dancers, master-of-isolation Marcus Jarrell Willis and a precise Penelope Gonzalez, make the most of their solos — she moving like an angry scorpion with exaggerated slowness, and he shuddering with the effort to demonstrate each of his muscles. Ms. Gonzalez always seems slightly arch, so it’s particularly nice to see that attitude converted into incharacter hauteur in this piece. But in “Black Diamond,” Mr. Rioult’s duet to Stravinsky’s “Duo Concertant,” Ms. Gonzalez’s athleticism hamstrings her. As she and Posy Knight move, straight-armed as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ms. Knight manages to shift subtly between priestess and 1940s pinup, while Ms. Gonzalez remains remote.

Mr. Rioult’s other premiere, “Symphony of Psalms,” may yet be a strong addition to his repertoire. Without its clichéd church-window projections and overt gestures (women suspended as crosses; dancers reaching for “the light”), “Symphony” would feel much more like the Rioult of old. The best of his gorgeous moments include a spectacular crossing sequence, culminating in the entire company suspended in a simultaneous leap, and a delightful, recurring image of the group swaying like lightly struck bells.

Still, if there is something slightly dispassionate about even the most successful pieces of Mr. Rioult’s work, something that feels distant and cool, it may be due to the faint whiff of imitation. Quotes from Martha Graham turn into outright dependence in “Black Diamond,” and “Exp #1” borrows heavily from David Parsons’s “Caught.” You can’t quibble with Rioult’s technical expertise, his musicality, his marvelous partnered lifts, or his stage pictures. But if the experience is escapist rather than transformative, it’s because each of these pieces only tots up to the precise sum of its parts.

Until June 17 (175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740).