Tuesday night’s tribute to minimalist composer Steve Reich at the Brooklyn Academy of Music — featuring dances by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Akram Khan — reaffirmed the potentially rapturous quality of minimal dance performed to minimal music.

The music’s clear rhythmic potency makes it irresistibly kinetic, and while its endless repetitions can dull the senses, they can also both train the eye and hone the perceptive faculties by forcing attention on minute modulations and variations.

The evening featured two different sides of Mr. Reich’s work. Ms. De Keersmaeker’s “Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich” (created with Michèle Anne De Mey), which was first performed in 1982, opened the program, and was danced last night by Ms. De Keersmaeker and Tale Dolven to a recorded score.

In the opening “Violin Phase,” the two women seemed to equal four as projections silhouetted their individual shadows onto a backdrop: the shadow play gave us two individual shadows flanking a third distinct projection that outlined two overlapping figures. The confined dynamics and expository scale of Mr. Reich’s keyboard piece found a parallel in the two women, who were confined to narrow tracts of space, first upstage, and then down. The phrases repeated just as doggedly as the score, thus rendering moments in which Ms. De Keersmaeker’s choreographed rhythms diverged slightly from the score significant.

Costumes consisting of sneakers and bias-cut jersey dresses became integral to the choreography as the dresses fanned out while the women spun. Occasionally, one woman moved clockwise while the other moved counterclockwise, forcing them to face each other with each oppositional revolution. At other times, the two moved together. A relevé that preceded a twirl gave an intriguing sensation of pause or suspension, while a relevé-hold-tilt phrase conveyed a certain pathos, a reach into the unknown.

In “Piano Phase” the two women returned, sitting beneath two lighting fixtures downstage, while voices on the soundtrack repeated phrases about bruises and blood.

Again, the dancers swiveled toward and away from each other. Their hands made egg-beating motions while they folded from the waist like automatons.

“Come Out” was a solo for Ms. De Keersmaeker, in which she moved first in semi-darkness, then traversed the perimeter of a cone of light shining down onto the stage. She expanded her movements into little jumps, and added a note of coyness by repeatedly flipping up her skirt and showing us her underpants.

In “Clapping Music,” the fourth and final section of “Fase,” both women wore sweat pants and jogged in place, extending their arms in traffic guardlike poses. The dancers’ feet inscribed heel and toe patterns, while sometimes they rose to the very tips of their sneaker-clad feet as if standing on pointe.

Following the intermission came a very different score by Mr. Reich and a very a different piece choreographed by Akram Khan to Mr. Reich’s “Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings.” Mr. Reich’s piece was both specially commissioned and given its premiere by the London Sinfonietta last year, and was performed live by the same orchestra last night at BAM, with the musicians arrayed onstage, rather than in the pit. Surrounded by the orchestra, the dancers had less room in which to move than in Ms. De Keersmaeker’s piece, but they inhabited the space more expansively, in accordance with the dimensions of the score.

If the motor impulse generated by Mr. Reich’s music in “Fase” was a thrum, his “Variations” produced a more percussive response to its jagged phrases, clenched rhythms, and lush harmonies. Mr. Khan’s piece was choreographed for four men — last night performed by Mr. Khan, Gregory Maqoma, and Young Jin Kim. If Ms. De Keersmaeker’s contribution contained a welcome quotient of aerobic energy, endurance, and bravado, Mr. Khan’s piece was driven by an excess of machismo, beginning with the tincture of frat boy humor in the framing of the dance.The lights stayed up as Mr. Maqoma sat stage center and talked into a mike, giving responses — “I’m very well, thank you” — to questions that were never asked. After a facetious question-and-answer session, the lights dimmed and the dance itself began.

At times it had the flavor of hip-hop or capoeira and was meant to look improvisatory, which contrasted with the regimentation of Ms. De Keersmaeker’s piece. Mr. Khan’s choreography was largely angular, and parts of the body were often isolated: Retracted shoulders and outstretched arms suggested spread wings. When all three men danced together, they moved in on each other with a note of menace that sometimes suggested a boxing ring.

Mr. Reich has studied and incorporated the rhythms of African music in his work, and in Mr. Khan’s piece there was also a tribal flavor as the men dropped into widely braced squats that seemed shamanistic. Sometimes they shook as if enacting a rite of possession.

The onstage orchestra became both a subject and participant in Mr. Khan’s choreography, as the conductor and dancers seemed to exchange, merge, or blur their roles. At one point, the conductor, Alan Pierson, ambled into the dance space, while all three dancers seemed to supplant him. Then, one of them moved the conductor’s music stand to the wings, and then Mr. Pierson ceded the dance floor once more to the dancers.

“Variations” concluded with Mr. Maqoma again downstage center at the mike, fielding another virtual interviewer. This time, though, his response was appropriately minimal. “Uh-huh” he said, and the lights went out.