Of the four featured Latine choreographers, two are emerging talents, both have history with Ballet Hispánico as dancers. Director of the company’s school, Michelle Manzanales follows up on the success of her 2017 “Con Brazos Abiertos” with “Sor Juana,” an ambitious work that tells the story of a legendary seventeenth-century Mexican feminist, poet, scholar, and nun. Omar Román de Jesús, a Princess Grace Award winner in choreography and Baryshnikov Arts Center fellow at Kaatsbaan, makes his Ballet Hispánico choreographic debut with “Papagayos,” or parrots. 

“Papagayos” begins before it begins with a little disturbance. Just as intermission is ending, Amanda Del Valle, dressed in a shaggy clown suit of multi-colored mylar strips (is she a parrot?) noisily makes her way down the aisle to the foot of the stage and brays to those seated in the front rows, “Have you seen my hat?” When the curtain goes up, Amir Baldwin is wearing the hat—a bowler—while standing atop one of several folding chairs lined up in a row. The other characters circle around in a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, Baldwin points his fingers to shoot anyone left without a seat. The hat represents power, and the dance shows the characters jockeying for its possession with attention grabbing dance sequences and arresting partnering. Cori Lewis takes on the boneless affect of a ragdoll as Baldwin lifts and tosses her corpse in various ways, eventually picking her up by one leg to lower her onto the ground. Despite the dark theme—a tale of power, influence, and identity in the face of unauthorized control, per program notes—there is a playfulness, and it’s a pleasure to simply watch the dancers move. Dressed to give the impression of gangsters, they move among one another as seamlessly as the matched set of color coordinated suits they wear.