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Juxtaposing his signature sweeping movement with recognizable torture imagery (a figure with his back to the audience clasps his hands behind his head), "Alchemy" takes place on a stage that resembles a prison cell.

Doug Varone returned to the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night with "Alchemy," a dance for eight set to "Daniel Variations," which Steve Reich wrote in 2006 as a tribute to the kidnapped and slain journalist Daniel Pearl. A program note credited to Mr. Pearl's widow, Mariane, states, "In the end, you can only oppose them with the strength they think they have taken away from you."

Mr. Varone's new work, vigorously yet not always so deftly, pursues that idea of inner strength. Juxtaposing his signature sweeping movement with recognizable torture imagery (a figure with his back to the audience clasps his hands behind his head), "Alchemy" takes place on a stage that resembles a prison cell. There is no primary figure meant to represent Mr. Pearl; while the men, in black and gray, alternate between fear and resilience, the women, dressed in blue, offer comfort.

The music -- four movements that include text from the Book of Daniel and Mr. Pearl's own words -- is given an enigmatic environment in Jane Cox's lighting, which spills beams onto the stage to evoke an atmosphere of grim captivity. Timothy R. Mackabee's set, a backdrop of a stone wall that stretches across the back of the stage, encloses the space like a vise.

In the final moments the men face the audience, their eyes closed and their arms outstretched as the women stand before the wall. Gradually the lighting shifts, from dark to light -- as if the bleakest of nights has given way to an optimistic sunrise or spiritual escape. But applying such a story to a dance, however ambiguous, is risky, and Mr. Varone's rendering is cloaked in somber exaggeration.

The program includes two older works by Mr. Varone: "Tomorrow" (2000), set to love songs by Reynaldo Hahn, and "Lux" (2006). In "Tomorrow" the perfume of the music is lost in the fleetingly forced meetings and partings of the dancers.

The athletic "Lux," set to Philip Glass's "Light," rushes along in a tornado of movement in which eight dancers slice through space with razor-sharp arms and quick turns that carve crescent-moon patterns onto the stage. The work begins and ends with a solo by Eddie Taketa, a company veteran, whose precision and mesmerizing lushness bring exultation to life.

Doug Varone and Dancers continue through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, Chelsea; (212) 242-0800, joyce.org.

[Photograph]

Doug Varone and Dancers: Performing "Alchemy," Set to Music by Steve Reich, at the Joyce Theater.(Photograph by Nicholas Roberts for the New York Times)