At one point in “Nefés,” Pina Bausch’s 2004 dance-theater portrait of Istanbul, a group of friends gather for a celebratory picnic. Women in colorful floor-length dresses lay down white tablecloths, and men in dapper, open-collared suits join them. Out come the props — wine glasses and bottles, containers of food. The men and women make a lovely group — sort of a modern-day, live-action version of Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.” While they’re chattering away, the group’s self-appointed photographer pops up and snaps a posed picture.

It’s an apt metaphor for “Nefés” itself, which unfolds like a series of stylized snapshots. There may be a domestic flavor to the folksy scenes Ms. Bausch lays end on end. But at the same time, her characters practically shout, “Look at me!”

The result is a work that, in turning small, private moments into showy solos, dramatic pas de deux, broad comedy bits, and epic tableaux, arrives somewhere in the realm of propaganda. “Nefés” has something in common with those old Soviet posters deifying the worker, or with the sleek advertisements that convert daily occurrences (taking laundry out of the dryer, reading the morning paper) into desirable lifestyle commodities.

Ms. Bausch, who has been associated in the past with dark, morally discomfiting works, was clearly charmed by her subject. “Nefés” (which means “breath” in Turkish) is a whole lot sunnier than much of her previous work. Many, no doubt, will be enchanted by the piece, seeing it as an adoring, affirming ode to the city’s vibrant beauty.

But there is something amiss. Ms. Bausch’s characterization has some of the glib qualities of an Istanbul brochure. Its characters feel too much like symbols; its scenes feel epigrammatic. It’s an operetta masquerading as opera.

Viewed as operetta, however, “Nefés” has many virtues, including a lot of good-natured mugging and whimsy. In the opening scene, a goofy fellow in a sarong-like towel crows,”This is me in the hammam!” A girl enters dressed entirely in soap bubbles, and produces the requisite ticket to the Turkish bath from underneath the suds. Now a group of fully-dressed girls comes onstage; they bend forward so their long hair cascades over their faces. To an addictive drumbeat, the girls slap rhythmically at their hair.

It’s the first of many tactile sequences; when some long pillowcases are produced — along with basins of sudsy water — the dancers blow air into them, multiplying the bubbles. Each dancer then squeezes the foam out like frosting from a pastry bag, dropping it onto another dancer’s prone body. Later, two girls pour honey on some cakes and eat them. A young man boosts a girl up on a chair to get at a box of chocolate creams. Two women use a piece of chalk to trace circles on the floor around their bodies.

Most tactile of all, though, is the giant puddle of water that waxes and wanes on the otherwise bare stage. Of course, from the moment it’s introduced, one waits for the splashes, and there are quite a few. Dancers slosh through it, drink from it, send objects across it. It’s most effective, however, when used as a landscape element, with the city’s inhabitants strolling or picnicking alongside it. Here, once again, Ms. Bausch’s dreamy naturalism is more compelling than her choreographed antics.

When they’re not communicating with props and words, the performers do a tremendous amount of dancing, almost entirely to music — an encyclopedic mix of world music, folk songs, international pop, Piazzolla tangos, and percussive rhythms. Much of this is allocated to ardent solos in which the motion is driven by the fastmoving arms. Often, the solos run out of material before they finish, inducing a kind of pleasant monotony.

Several sequences are built around a diminutive dancer, Shantala Shivalingappa, who’s a head shorter than the other female dancers. Her compact body is easily spun around by a series of men, a movement used as a kind of recurring accent. She also performs eye-catching solos steeped in classical Indian dancing, articulating the tiny, fine bones of her hands.

More effective than the dancing — much of which is attractive but generic — are the gestural movement sequences Ms. Bausch assembles like expressionist vaudeville skits. A woman takes her hands from a bucket and dries them on her apron before rubbing against her husband; then repeats the whole sequence over and over. Girls put their arms around their sweethearts, remaining frozen in place when the men duck out of their embraces; other men pop into the vacated spots.

Ms. Bausch’s Istanbul is a decidedly old-fashioned one. It has no video games, no televisions. Halfhearted attempts to introduce cars (via a giant video screen) and a Turkish bazaar are forgettable. After all, these contemporary slices of life aren’t the preferred symbols of Ms. Bausch’s reconstituted Istanbul. (One wonders whether Ms. Bausch’s idealized Istanbul is rooted to some extent in her politics; in her native Germany, Turkish immigration remains a hot-button issue.)

Ultimately, the jam-packed “Nefés” amounts to a series of pictures at an exhibition. They are pictures drawn by an acknowledged master of dance theater, and they have a unique lilt to them. But as a theatrical experience, this is gallery-going. Some pictures are more interesting than others, some are stunning and some don’t really work at all. And by the end, a bit of museum fatigue has set in.

Until December 12 (30 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).