Jamie Bishton is known primarily as a former standout dancer with the companies of Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov. That may change. Two new dances presented by Jamie Bishton/Dance on Thursday night at Joyce SoHo suggested that Mr. Bishton is well on his way to a solid career as a choreographer. He dances big, filling the stage like a sudden gust of breeze, but no detail or nuance is slighted. He also seems to be an artist who has a relaxed appreciation of the everyday world and popular culture. All of this comes together in ''From a Life Together'' and the reworked ''Things That Cannot Be Painted.''

''Things,'' performed to a slyly clunky score by Greg Hale Jones, sets six women and one man whirling across every inch of stage space. The flowing patterns have an easy intricacy. Mr. Bishton's juxtapositions of groups of dancers catch the eye, but not for more than their allocated moment, as do tricky little sequences of moves and gestures embedded in the flow. The parts are individually distinctive here, but never greater than the whole.

''Things'' is a pure-dance piece with a sly subtext. The six women might be a Greek-style chorus or simply maidens clustering around their man. The man, Seth Stewart Williams, coolly plucks Ashleigh Leite from the group for a lushly physical central duet. Mr. Bishton's gift for blending the vivid specific and the grander whole is epitomized in the dance's closing image, a sudden pinwheel lift and resettling of Ms. Leite into the line of women.

The strong, exuberant cast was completed by Tricia Brouk, Stephanie Liapis, Meg Moore, Rebecca Warner and Lisa Wheeler.

A fascinating relationship is at the heart of ''From a Life Together,'' set to Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel's String Quartet in E flat and danced by Mr. Bishton and Ms. Liapis, an apparent muse whose clear, delicately gutsy dancing was very like the quality of the score. The duet is filled with the requisite troubled yearning. But Mr. Bishton's performing also suggests a character who needs to control, though often charmingly, yet is not quite able to.

Was he a modern-day von Rothbart, faced with an enchanting Odette who is attracted to the sorcerer but has no intention of being turned into a swan?

This big, richly detailed duet is actually based on the complex relationship of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, sibling composers. The resonances are intriguing.

Published: 09 - 25 - 2002 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 1 , Page 5