Studio spaces have their limitations, but one of the best things about Pam Tanowitz’s “Dream Sequence (No Secrets),” shown at City Center Studio 5 on Tuesday night, was the way she and her production designer, Philip Treviño, made the space feel as if it was the only possible setting for the work.

The transformation of the ordinary practice area was subtle but effective: white slipcovers over the L-shaped rows of seating, a white curtain across one side of the studio and curtains drawn over the mirrors on another wall. A door frame hung with a sheet of shiny silver strips stood alone at the back, a portal to and from the world of performance.

It was an appropriately clean, spare environment for Ms. Tanowitz’s clean, spare choreography, and the effect was rather like artistic green tea: cleansing and beneficial and a little ascetic. But this wasn’t immediately apparent at the start of “Dream Sequence,” which begins with a duet for Anne Lentz and Glen Rumsey to slow lines of electronic sound by Dan Siegler. (Mr. Siegler’s music alternates with excerpts from Paul Dukas’s “Péri,” and Heinrich von Biber’s Passacaglia for solo violin. Like much else in this work, the choices are careful and just right.)

The pairing of Ms. Lentz and Mr. Rumsey offers more emotional texture than the rest of the piece, perhaps because of Mr. Rumsey’s slightly fey yet intense presence, which nicely counterbalances Ms. Lentz’s cool aloofness as they move, alone and together, through the clear balletic phrases that characterize the choreography. Those phrases — the deep pliés used as transitions, the carefully posed pauses — are strongly reminiscent of Merce Cunningham’s work. But small shifts of the hips, twisty limping runs and fouettés performed with a hunching upper body provide little disjunctive moments amid the smooth, clear balletic flow.

Like a classical ballet, the piece is divided (at least on paper) into “Act I” and “Act II,” each comprising four sections and bridged by a brisk “intermission dance,” performed to country music with the lights turned up. Ms. Tanowitz smoothly links these sections, often by leaving one dancer onstage to join the next group, but she is less successful in creating a sense of an inevitable theatrical whole over the length of the work. This is particularly evident at the end, when she introduces a “chorus” of five women in black as the dancers open the curtains over a mirror, and at the side, where more rows of slipcovered chairs are revealed.

It’s a nice touch, both conceptually and aesthetically, but it feels unconnected to anything else in the piece. In the end “Dream Sequence” feels more interesting to think about than it does in the moment: an indication that Ms. Tanowitz is talented enough to do more.