The highlight of choreographer Garth Fagan’s season at the Joyce Theater, which begins tomorrow, is his new work “Edge/Joy,” a piece for the entire company that begins in silence. For more than two minutes, dancers perform Mr. Fagan’s steps — which fuse ballet and modern dance with African and Caribbean elements — to no music at all. When the music does come, it’s an atonal, highly percussive score by Mexican contemporary composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, played on vibraphone, guitar, marimba, cello, violin, clarinet, and piano.

Ironically, it was Mr. Fagan’s much-touted, finely honed musical sensibility that led him to open the new work in silence. The Jamaican-born choreographer sees music and dance as equally strong parts of a whole; rather than one being derivative of the other, each should be able to stand on its own. Which is usually true for music, but less so for dance.

“I can’t stand doppelganger type of dancing,” Mr. Fagan said, from his studio in Rochester, N.Y., where his company is based. “If the music makes a big, loud noise, that doesn’t mean we have to make a big, strong movement. We dance with the music — we absolutely do not dance to the music.”

Over the years, Mr. Fagan, who won a Tony in 1998 for choreographing “The Lion King” on Broadway, has become known for his wide-ranging musical choices, in addition to his much-praised signature movement style. Mr. Fagan’s dances, which often find dancers balanced in seemingly impossible postures, are often accompanied by live music, ranging from chamber music to the National Percussion Group of Kenya to the funky Jazz Jamaica All-Stars. Mr. Fagan, a jazz aficionado, is perhaps best known for his 1991 collaboration with jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis on “Griot New York.”

But lately, Mr. Fagan has been interested in plumbing the possibilities of atonal music. After receiving the Joyce’s commission for the piece that would become “Edge/Joy,” Mr. Fagan found himself in love with Mr. Zohn-Muldoon’s piece, especially its use of cellos. The ambient music inspired him to create a dance that reimagines the use of space onstage — a dance he had been thinking about for a long time.

“This music just spoke to me,” Mr. Fagan said in his faint, lilting Jamaican accent. “In thinking about it, the edginess came to me.”

In the piece, most of the dance takes place on the periphery of the stage, with center stage being used mostly for transitions. Many of the dancers’ movements are intentionally blocked from the audience’s view by other dancers, Mr. Fagan said, and entrances and exits overlap.

“When I have a dancer dancing before another, then suddenly a third, there’s this wonderful place where the movement intersects,” Mr. Fagan said. “That happens a lot in ‘edgy’ relationships.”

While Mr. Zohn-Muldoon’s compositions provide the perfect backdrop for Mr. Fagan’s thematic content, the compositions lend challenge to the performance. Because they lack traditional measures and chord structures, it takes great concentration for dancers, who at times must tune out loud, percussive elements.

“Using atonal music gives some freedom and also gives you some tyrannies,” Mr. Fagan said, adding that he was excited about the challenge. “It’s harder work this way than just doing musical visualization. That’s easier — I can do it in my sleep.”

Mr. Fagan’s musical risk-taking has earned him a devoted audience of jazz musicians and composers, who flock to his performances in droves. That’s a major point of pride for the choreographer, who was born in 1940 into a house filled with music. His mother and Oxford-educated father dragged him to lunch-hour concerts at the nearby Jamaica Institute, exposing him to classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz and American singer Marian Anderson. At home, they played jazz, classical, and Caribbean music. At first, he resisted, but before long, Mr. Fagan said, “they were punishing me by not taking me to these concerts.”

Mr. Fagan, who quit piano lessons in frustration, never learned to play an instrument. Instead, he channeled his love of music into dance, touring with Ivy Baxter’s Jamaican National Dance Company and studying in New York with Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, and Alvin Ailey before founding his own dance company in Rochester in 1970.

The company dances at the Joyce Theater regularly, and this season — which runs until November 11 — includes works from as far back as 1978, including last year’s premiere, “Senku.” The director of programming at the Joyce Theater, Martin Wechsler, describes Mr. Fagan’s choreography as having an “accomplished musicality.” “The range of music that he works with is so diverse — from rock to classical to traditional. He’s inspired by so many different kinds of music,” Mr. Wechsler said.

But it’s not just the range that sets him apart from other choreographers, Mr. Wechsler said — it’s his deep appreciation of music, and his view of music and dance as separate, complementary spheres.

“Music is like frosting,” Mr. Fagan emphasized. “And the cake had better be good.”