Eszter Salamon Dances at MoMA Eszter Salamon performing in "Dance for Nothing" at the Museum of Modern Art. The acoustics in the Werner and Elaine Dannheisser Lobby Gallery, on the fourth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, aren't so great - or not ideal, at least, for dancing nonstop while reciting John Cage's seminal "Lecture on Nothing," as Eszter Salamon does in her 2010 solo "Dance for Nothing." But last Thursday evening, during the work's United States premiere engagement, presented as part of the American Realness festival, one refrain couldn't be missed: More and more, I have the feeling that we are getting nowhere. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere, and that is a pleasure. Ms. Salamon returned to these words again and again - addressing herself as much as her audience in the round - in the grounded tone and spontaneous cadence that characterized her 45-minute delivery. Simultaneously, she may have been doing any number of the oddly intriguing things that made up her physical vocabulary: flapping her hands, swiveling on one knee, coyly strutting, scrawling in the air with gangly, interlocked arms. The notion of "getting nowhere" resonated on multiple levels. If any one idea forms the core of Cage's unsentimental composition, which he wrote in 1949, it's that, quite simply, "here we are." As another recurring phrase goes: "It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. In her restless perpetual motion, Ms. Salamon, a Hungarian-born choreographer based in Paris and Berlin, imbued that philosophy with an eerie sense of truth. At the same time, you couldn't help feeling a little stuck in the 1960s. Maybe it was just her black jeans, black T-shirt and sneakers - similar to Yvonne Rainer's outfit in the film of her 1966 "Trio A" - but Ms. Salamon's resolutely mundane movement often recalled that landmark piece of postmodern dance. Ms. Rainer, it so happened, was in the audience. And thank goodness; her clearheaded questions kept the meandering post-show discussion (an equal part of the performance) mercifully afloat. She described Ms. Salamon's interpretation as "whimsical, playful, in the way I remember Cage delivering his lectures." Another viewer, seemingly more flummoxed, asked: "What are we to receive as the audience? What are you giving to us? Ms. Salamon gestured to the vacant space where she had been dancing. "I give what I did," she replied. What it does to you I can't control.