Savion Glover is a big enough star that people will watch him in just about anything, but “Invitations to a Dancer,” which opened on Tuesday night at the Joyce, really flirts with the limits of audience tolerance. In the past, Mr. Glover’s willingness to strip the tap show down to its essence has yielded some great evenings, like “Classical Savion,” and the gospel-infused “Visions of a Bible.” But here the concept — tap meets modern and ballet — is too weak to carry the all-acoustic show.

In “Invitations,” producer-director-star Mr. Glover has jettisoned music in favor of what he calls the “bare soundz” of acoustic tapping. To this pure, unadulterated tap he has added a chorus of brightly-costumed female dancers, who supply everything from music-video gyrations to funky ballerina moves. So pointless and distracting are these guest dancers that they nearly overwhelm the substantial stretches of rhythmic brilliance by Mr. Glover and his two sidekick hoofers. Furthermore, the four undistinguished female dancers in “Invitations” don’t approach Mr. Glover’s level of artistry. In the end, “Invitations to a Dancer” feels like a show badly in need of a producer.

Still, there are some potent displays of virtuosity mixed in among the miscues. On Tuesday, the hoofers-only first act was a knockout, as Mr. Glover and his two talented sidemen (Marshall L. Davis Jr. and a second, unidentified tapper) created rich rhythmic compositions from the raw materials of taps, slides, and pregnant pauses. Some sounded like complicated bucket drumming; others borrowed the rhythms and conventions of jazz, with the men sharing an opening verse, trading solos, and winding up together for one last refrain.

Mr. Glover occupied one of three spotlit platforms, on which special microphones picked up every nuance of his incomparable footwork, performed here in bright green shoes. The other two men, dressed similarly in white buttondown shirts and loose blue trousers, had their own platforms on the bare stage, but no green shoes. Intermittently, colored lights or slide projections shifted on the brick wall behind the trio, but these shifts were more perfunctory than thematic.

Inevitably, the eye and ear were drawn to Mr. Glover, who took the bulk of the solos and the fleet-footed variations. His rhythmic ideas seemed to form and work themselves out spontaneously, with the assurance and creativity of a great jazz man. Without music, his virtuoso riffs resounded with crystalline clarity. This was a purist’s dream — seeing Mr. Glover improvise with the utterly un-self-conscious air of a guy experimenting alone in his basement.

Equally compelling was the sight of Mr. Glover’s upper body — his trademark dreadlocks swinging, his face moving in and out of a trancelike state, his incredibly loose torso hunching over and then flopping upright, his fist suddenly pounding out a rhythm on his thigh. On those rare occasions when he turned his attention from the aural to the visual, spinning in circles or bounding around the edge of his platform, the crowd shouted its approval.

Regrettably, the second act marked the end of Mr. Glover’s purist experiment, as three women in Marilyn Monroe halter dresses arrayed themselves in front of the tappers, undulating and posing and, essentially, blocking the view. Close on their heels came a ballerina in point shoes and a tutu, the merry Suzana Stankovic, who quickly ditched her dainty steps for a full-out boogie. A jazz dance solo followed.

These pairings seemed intended to illuminate some unexplored relationship between tap and other dance forms. At the end of the day, though, Mr. Glover was merely laying down rhythms for dancing much less interesting than his own.

It was a relief, then, to see him step out alone for one last solo. Two silhouettes of Mr. Glover were projected on the back wall as he embarked on a virtuoso extended riff. He played gentle rhythms against noisy flurries, hollow sounds against thuds, heels against toes, slides against taps. And he did it all with the daring and skill of a consummate jazz musician.

Mr. Glover’s talent and star quality are powerful enough that he can grip a crowd on a bare stage with nothing more than his own tapping for accompaniment. But they aren’t enough to compensate for a misguided, badly executed concept. “Invitations to a Dancer” leaves you wishing for the concert performance that could display Mr. Glover’s talents to their full dazzling effect.

Until July 14 (175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740).