A whirling fusion of old and new worlds

The relationship between the dance cultures of Spain and those of its former colonies offer exciting, unexplored possibilities to choreographers with an interest in anthropology. The premiere of “Reflejos Espanoles” on a six-part program by the locally based Pacifico Dance Company, on Saturday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, suggested several plausible approaches. However, in a mere 15 minutes, guest choreographer Amanda Navar Farias could do little more than map out this new frontier for folklorico.

Beginning on flamenco turf and ending in mariachi territory, she showed how interactions in the New World between Spaniards and Mexicans created a hybrid culture. “La Fiesta Brava” used a shared affinity for bullfighting and a dance related to it (the pasodoble) to highlight the Spanish-Mexican connection -- but even without its ambitious premise, her fusion quartet “El Encuentro” would have impressed because of its deft shuffling of bodies and vocabularies.

Farias’ group sequences found many of the Pacifico dancers struggling to look Spanish. The men had the steps but not the style; the women fared better in poses than in motion. But the troupe definitely needed “Reflejos Espanoles,” because so many of its other pieces proved too mindlessly celebratory and dependent on costume spectacle.

Typically, the new “Feria Chiapaneca” suite by Adriana Gainey (company artistic director) and Joel Sandoval (assistant director) had plenty of energy, speed and theatrical splendor but worked too aggressively and thus lost the grace and charm of its source idiom. Replete with masked processions, mass percussive footwork and even a boar hunt, it rushed from one highlight to another with too much rough execution along the way.

The sweetest moment (and it didn’t last long): the women effortlessly spinning in multicolor floral skirts as sheer as butterfly wings, with delicate moves of the shoulders and head accenting the turns.

Here and in such older Gainey repertory as “Tierra Calentana” from Guerrero and “Que Lindo Es Chihuahua,” you could admire the stamina and versatility of such paragons as Melissa Lopez, Seth Contreras, Jesenia Gardea and Manuel Soriano, even as you wished that they had fewer costume changes and more extended-showcase opportunities. But Gainey didn’t allow even herself and Sandoval much time in the spotlight. Therefore, the most satisfying solo of the evening came from the unbilled, spectacular Francisco Andrade: a rope dancer able to spin loops within loops and to fashion quick-change rope sculptures as well.

Besides relying on taped music, Pacifico enlisted the services of Los Hermanos Herrera and Mariachi Monumental de America -- but at a level of amplification overkill that made it impossible to appreciate anything but silence. In “Reflejos Espanoles,” however, Gerardo Morales, Julie Navar and Antonio Triana somehow managed to perform a Sevillanas at human scale -- and achieved another Spanish conquest.