"Comme Toujours Here I Stand," by Big Dance Theater "Comme Toujours Here I Stand:" From left, Molly Hickok, Tymberly Canale and Kourtney Rutherford of Big Dance Theater, at New York Live Arts. Robert Frost once likened working without form to playing tennis without a net. By this logic, working with two forms could be seen as playing with dual nets: double the chance for winners, and unforced errors. This is the exacting, dizzying game played by Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar - one for each net - of Big Dance Theater. They've been at it a long time, splicing dance and theater. But still it bears remarking upon; there are remarkably few artists who do it half as well as this influential duo. On Wednesday night their 2009 concoction, "Comme Toujours Here I Stand," opened a four-night stint at New York Live Arts. As is typical of Big Dance, there are lots of moving (literally and metaphorically) parts, and a structure that sounds more convoluted on paper than it is in real time. The work is based on the screenplay of the beguiling Agnès Varda classic from 1962, "Cléo From 5 to 7," in which a pop singer awaits the results of a medical test. Interrupting the Varda material is the narrative of a cast remaking the film, with the dancers also playing those actors. . But of course because the star (Molly Hickok, terrific at portraying petulant and self-involved) is just as impossible and childish as the singer she portrays in the film, the interruptions aren't really interruptions, but variations on a theme. Around and behind and under all of this swims Ms. Parson's tightly choreographed set of interlocking actions. They are both task-based and inscrutable, involving cast and crew and design collaborators, a few of whom are onstage (The producer Aaron Rosenblum takes a few marvelously saucy dance turns.) The terrific set, designed by Joanne Howard, is movable, with its various backdrops also serving as screens for Jeff Larson's evocative videos and Joe Levasseur's nimble lighting. The ebullient collage of songs and sounds (designed by Jane Shaw, engineered by Jamie McElhinney) is itself a character. But amid all this action there is also no action. "Cléo From 5 to 7" depicts the slow passage of time in all its vicissitudes, and this, too, on a fundamental level, is Ms. Parson and Mr. Lazar's material. Watching "Comme Toujours," I thought of a moment in Target Margin Theater's "Uncle Vanya" (another marvelous adaptation playing this week at Here) in which an actor holds up a handwritten sign announcing, "Time Passes." There is no such sign in the Big Dance Theater show. But the sense of Cléo's panicky wait and the anxiety-spiked tedium on the film set collapse into each other, evoking the claustrophobia of people held captive and rendered not quite useful. Much as Cléo flits from one item of clothing to the next (Claudia Stephens designed the smart, layered costumes), Ms. Parson and Mr. Lazar juxtapose materials, moods, textures. Meaning accrues. It also, at points, ebbs. This, I think, is a pacing issue, and perhaps a compositional one. The portrayal of an endless, inconsolable afternoon is a tricky thing, and some of the directors" choices feel too much like the frivolous distractions in which Cléo seeks refuge. Theatrical devices don't always rub up against one another in ways that feel greater than the sum of their parts. And yet, all of these carefully moving parts avoid mere busyness. It is important to name the rest of the cast: Tymberly Canale, Chris Giarmo, Ryutaro Mishima and Kourtney Rutherford. This is a true, and very fine, ensemble. They are, unlike those they portray, doing the best sort of honest work. "Comme Toujours Here I Stand" runs through Saturday at New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 924-0077, newyorklivearts.org