Choreographers are mostly too naive or too knowing to be strange. They either mistake their commonplaces for the unusual or flaunt their originality until it feels like a pose. Weirdo Wally Cardona, however, is fierce enough in his preoccupations not to care whether anyone shares them and yet aware enough of dance history not to repeat it. Juxtaposing Kierkegaard, compellingly disjointed dancing and the sweet voice of youth in his second BAM commission, the New York choreographer baffles and endears.

Autonomy: ‘Really Real’

Dance may be a synthetic art – steps, music and lighting blending together for a single effect – but Really Real puts a premium on autonomy. The 80-minute piece begins with a teenager on tape stumbling through passages from a Kierkegaard biography. She is what she is, and the philosopher is something else: an obstacle to be overcome. Meanwhile, civilians in street clothes wander on to the beautifully dilapidated stage to sit or stand as Cardona moves among them, never touching a soul, his arms like the Tin Woodman’s, his hips like a snake.

If anything had the power to override the boundaries here, it would be the oratorio by Phil Kline (composer of the Unsilent Night boom-box symphony) for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Beginning low and sweet, the harmonies slowly accumulate into an oceanic wave of innocence . But the angelic voices, emanating from the balcony behind us, are too far away to wash over the stage. In lyrics adapted from Kierkegaard, the children sing: “To transform all this distance into one normal step into life is the single miracle.” Indeed.

In further divisions, Cardona separates the dances into discrete numbers for women, men and then couples. (By the time the quasi-romantic duets arrive, we have made our peace with existential isolation and don’t want them.) Roderick Murray lights the stage in strips and patches. The choreographer even divvies up the body – curving spine from plank-like arms and slippery hips.

The dancers fall, however, every which way. Their struggle with grace and gravity is sometimes droll, sometimes dry and mostly low key, but never boring. Forget what John Donne said. According to Really Real, every man is an island, and it’s alright.

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