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As the Trisha Brown Dance Company continues on without Trisha Brown \u2014 the great postmodern choreographer who died in 2017<\/a> \u2014 the group has staged works on and off the proscenium stage, and even relocated her works to a beach<\/a>.<\/p>\n But a company can only get so far with its founding choreographer\u2019s dances. It has entered the inevitable phase of needing to commission new works, and for its latest season at the Joyce Theater, which began on Tuesday, the group tapped the French choreographer No\u00e9 Soulier to create a premiere, its second by someone other than Brown.<\/a><\/p>\n Soulier\u2019s \u201cIn the Fall\u201d is part of a season dedicated to Steve Paxton<\/a>, who died last month. In the new work, Soulier presents a finely wrought response to Brown\u2019s vocabulary, deconstructed painstakingly as he places it under a microscope.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn the Fall,\u201d created with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels and others, features eight dancers in all, wearing separates in blue, yellow or red, designed by Kaye Voyce. The performers periodically show up at the same time, but even when they do, it is still a stage of individuals. The stark lighting, by Victor Burel and Soulier, makes them glimmer like jewels seen from a distance in a cave.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At first, two dancers are highlighted, Ashley Merker and Burr Johnson, each in blue and moving with ample space in between them as they navigate a darkened stage. Their bodies slowly morph and deepen into shapes and balances, and they succumb to gravity. It\u2019s not fast and furious but initiated, seemingly, by a deep internal pull.<\/p>\n The dancers aren\u2019t outwardly showy, yet they are dramatic, with matter-of-fact, glacial clarity. In contrast with the willowy fluidity of Brown\u2019s movement, which brushes and tickles the air with seemingly unrestrained looseness, Soulier organizes bodies carefully, segment by segment. His idea of a fall is one of everlasting motion; it trickles out of the body not as much to collapse as to crumble, leaving behind pools of flesh.<\/p>\n Soulier, who is the director of the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France \u2014 one of that country\u2019s government-supported choreographic centers \u2014 studied Brown\u2019s vocabulary and repertoire as a student at the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios<\/a> in Brussels. In a program note for the Joyce, he writes that while Brown \u201creveals the fundamental forces at work in the body,\u201d he explores \u201cinorganic transitions, the gap between intention and gesture, effort and contraction.\u201d<\/p>\n But as \u201cIn the Fall\u201d attests, there is an inner and outer force for both. While movement has a way of melting off bodies in Brown\u2019s work, Soulier, in his way of slowing things down, demonstrates an order and logic that echoes the structure binding Brown\u2019s ribbonlike flow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Set to a score by Florian Hecker, in which environmental sounds wash over the stage evoking sprinklers and distant traffic, Soulier\u2019s dance moves through solos and duets that feel like personal contests of control and dimension. It builds to a place of speed \u2014 bodies turn more turbulent as they rise and fall \u2014 before settling into its earlier pace, in which Johnson, repeating an image, uses his length to incredible effect as he balances on one foot with the other bent backward. His knees remain close as he folds over with his arms straight behind him until he rounds over so deeply that this torso twists into a fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This premiere was joined by two of Brown\u2019s works, the masterpiece \u201cGlacial Decoy\u201d (1979), featuring visual design and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, and \u201cWorking Title\u201d (1985), set to music by Peter Zummo. In that second, playful work, a brighter, more connected foray into solos and duets, Brown used its phrases, which pushed the dancers\u2019 physical limits, as a choreographic resource. (One iteration of the dance features a performer lifted into the air by a harness \u2014 Brown was transfixed with the idea of flying \u2014 but the Joyce production omits it.)<\/p>\n On Tuesday, \u201cWorking Title\u201d was an opportunity to study its dancers, including the alluring Jennifer Pay\u00e1n, who imparts an exciting rag doll precision to all of her parts, and Amanda Kmett\u2019Pendry, a former company member filling in for an ill dancer, whose artistry is imbued with ease.<\/p>\n And here, the elegant Catherine Kirk found more softness in Brown\u2019s movement. In a solo, her long limbs became liquid while still on high alert as she made a mad dash into a back wing. It was glorious, bringing to life Brown\u2019s program note about the dance: \u201cIf you\u2019re going fast, you just have to pick where you place your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cGlacial Decoy,\u201d Brown\u2019s first collaboration with Rauschenberg and her first proscenium work, four women \u2014 a fifth enters later \u2014 wear the artist\u2019s long, diaphanous dresses that make them look as if they\u2019re floating. They slide back and forth in choreography that, at first, has them curling in from either side of the stage. It\u2019s sly, purposely trippy: How many dancers are<\/em> there?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n All the while, Rauschenberg\u2019s images of Americana slide by, too. Black-and-white photographs \u2014 a tree with a string tied around it, a single lightbulb, a bicycle seat \u2014 provide stunning contrast as everyday life, much of it dusty and summertime hot, brushes up against gliding and ghostly female forms. \u201cGlacial Decoy\u201d remains the marvel it always has been.<\/p>\n Trisha Brown Dance Company<\/strong><\/p>\n Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, Manhattan; joyce.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n