Hay, a founding member of the venerable Judson collective, is a pioneer of postmodern dance and known for her choreographic experiments with time and space. Her new piece for Nora is, therefore, perhaps best defined by what it isn’t. It isn’t a routine with an obvious start and finish; it isn’t a meditation on a discernible theme; it isn’t an exhibition of technical rigour. In fact, the half-hour work is dislocated from almost all the normal parameters of performance: there’s as much standing around as there is dancing, there’s almost no music, and only once are the audience lights dimmed. Hay herself describes the choreography as “disorienting, comfortingly spare, right in silence.” For me, it registers as equal parts intriguing and confounding.

The dance we do witness includes shuffling and scooting, crawling and twirling, languid repose and goofy stabs at athletics. These motions are slow, casual, fragmented, the trio rarely moving in concert or intensifying their movement into something physically robust. Every so often a phrase materialises with some expressive lustre. In one, McMann and Sikorski egg on Wellesley Wesley as she bops around the stage, teasing her with daffy cheers like “bring it home” and “do it for London!” In another, the three align for a harmonised choral arrangement, a dusky display that’s both serene and unsettling.

Witty shows of motion and emotion surface, along with individual strengths, like Sikorski’s forte for ad-libbing and Wellesley Wesley’s leonine form, a striking edifice of long, twisted lines. The passive choreography does little to highlight these talents, though; they seem to emerge incidentally. The questions posed are interesting—Are the borders of performance fixed? Why is stillness so uncomfortable?—but there’s an aloofness that dulls even the livelier segments.

The troupe followed up the performance with a conversation inspired by Hay’s experience of rehearsing her own solo work while creating “Where Home Is.” The three took turns asking the audience to consider different frames for viewership, each meant to widen our perception of how we absorb a performance. The first frame asked us to “remember to recognise time is passing,” while the second pondered whether space can be “anything we want it to be.” The third—“What if my whole body sees what my eyes see?”—invited the audience to voice their thoughts on the subject, prompting one woman to reject “the very presumption that our eyes see the most.” It’s a thought-provoking exercise, but again the abstract, intellectualised tact dims the sense of dynamism.