In the eight years since the choreographer’s passing, the Trisha Brown Dance Company has focused on preserving and expanding her legacy. Not only did Brown have a voracious appetite for questioning and a tendency to subvert expectations, she prized collaborations with visual artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Donald Judd. For its Joyce season this year, TBDC spotlights this focus on visual elements with a new joint effort, “Time Again,” by Australian choreographer Lee Serle and visual designer Mateo Lopez, plus “Opal Loop” and “Son of Gone Fishin‘,” from Brown’s Unstable Molecular Structure Cycle series of the 1980s.

Serle, who worked one on one with Brown as a Rolex fellow in 2010-11, leans heavily on Brown’s movement style for “Time Again,” yet veers from her in the way his piece suggests a narrative. Billed as a study of the cycles of time, it casts the dancers as a community. The towering Burr Johnson draws attention. Watching him is like putting a magnifying glass up to whatever movement phrase he’s doing. Serle ratchets up this effect by dressing Johnson in a skirt and giving a feminine lilt to his gestures. Other characters in this community don’t ignite as memorably.

What gets the most attention in Serle’s “Time Again” is the set designed by Mateo Lopez. The artist uses what look like three-paneled room dividers to form a kind of temple onstage. First presented flat on the floor, the panels resemble patches of grass. Then they become walls, and eventually form a complete enclosure. Each divider has an arched doorway: set in the traditional orientation the doorway beckons one to enter; upside down, it presents a threshold to cross; leaning on its side, it becomes something else entirely.

Near the end of the work, the sound of birds makes me consider the stage activity as a flock settling in for the night. The mood is somber. The temple glows from within and we see a woman standing inside. We’re outsiders looking in.