All art discloses how it imagines its medium and idiom; cutting-edge artists simply do so more deliberately and vigorously, and Pam Tanowitz especially. The New York choreographer advertises this commitment in the title of her latest piece, Day for Night, as in the New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut’s most self-reflexive film. The movie is about a director (played by Truffaut) shooting a romantic farce like the one we are watching, except that Day for Night transcends its soapy genre. Truffaut exchanges “day for night”— shadowless banality for the mysterious dark of art—not by the usual cinematic sleights of hand but by the opposite: making matter out of daylight, drama out of dailiness. Tanowitz does the same with unremarkable steps. She has inherited from the 1960s postmodernists a no-tricks policy: you come by your magic honestly, without fancy maneuvers or theatrical illusions. This world premiere—featuring a half dozen judiciously chosen dancers—takes place in the amphitheater of Little Island, floating on the Hudson off Pier 55. The hour will be dusk, of course. —Apollinaire Scherr