There isn’t a dull moment in Momix’s 80-minute 1991 “Passion,” which the troupe chose to open its three-week season at the Joyce on Tuesday night. Given that Momix was founded by Moses Pendleton – the dancer and choreographer who originally performed with Pilobolus, which grew out of the late-1960s counter-culture – one might expect “Passion” to be a tribute to free love, or a sort of performance art “Oh, Calcutta!” But that’s not really what “Passion” is about.

The soundtrack of “Passion”is primarily excerpts from Peter Gabriel’s score for “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and the piece functions according to a doctrine of pagan, Christian, and pantheistic iconography. It is divided into 21 episodes, but they merge into a stream-of-consciousness whole in which motifs are introduced and sometimes repeated.

Time and again, Momix reveals strange and novel flora and fauna. The five-member cast seems larger than it is, in part because of the sleight of hand engineered by the dancers’ living sculpture.The dancers are splayed or straddled on horizontal lines that instantly turn vertical: Interlocking bodies are shelves, then spires.

“Passion” begins with the dancers in aggre gate construction: swaying, with splayed hands and legs.The dancers merge into a huddle, suggesting the genesis of life, the undifferentiated mass from which mitosis begins. “Passion” devotes a good deal of time to chronicling the evolution of various species, with a great deal of attention paid to the entomological and amphibious, as centipedal legs drub the ground and the performers ambulate by means of hopscotch leaps and frog hops.

Momix is like a contemporary and phantasmogorical equivalent to an all-in-one vaudeville program. This single troupe encompasses an entire bill of varied acts, from high wire suspension to a parasol-twirling “Floradora” style number; except that in “Passion,” the parasols are oversize, translucent umbrellas that the dancers pilot across the stage via runs and jumps, onto which strategically aimed light foreshortens the dancers’ figures. As a result, they look like pygmies caught in the spokes of their umbrellas.

Clad in mistiness, the entire piece is performed behind a scrim, onto which is projected an ever-shifting panoply of images: from smudged shapes to a recognizable shot of military chiefs of staff to aboriginal sculptures. Later, the appearance of women clad in tulle suggest a celestial shimmer.

Momix is always keen to draw a bead on religion and mores as instruments of sexual repression. The group often uses its multiform sculptural constructions to attest to the irrepressible imperatives of regeneration, as when the legs protruding from under a woman’s dress turn out to belong to one of the men in the cast.

The traditional Catholic Passion manifests itself in Momix’s “Passion,” as well. Momix takes to the air when a man is surrounded by three women – and all four figures are suspended by wires. The women sometimes become dead weight, but sometimes they seem to dole out a flagellation to the man.

Props are the performer’s partners throughout the Momix repertory. One of the most striking ideas here in “Passion” is the streamer manipulated in helical whorls by a unitard-clad woman. Throughout the piece, there is an almost ever-present serpentine shape to the energies conjured; sometimes the dancers spin like dervishes, or revolve like ceramic vase being molded on the wheel. In the finale of “Passion,” the cast deploys flexible sticks or lassoes, which they manipulate into teardrop and petal shapes, taking a child-like delight in the metamorphoses that gives the finale the feeling of an improvisatory exercise.

“Passion” was conceived and directed by Mr. Pendleton with the help of a bevy of assistants. It has become one of Momix’s repertory standbys, but it retains its freshness. Decoding its plethora of imagery makes repeated viewings well worth the trip.

“Passion” will be performed until May 14 (175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, 212-242-0800).