MONTCLAIR, N.J., Nov. 30 — Bill T. Jones’s new “Quarreling Pair” may surprise those familiar with his work over the last 20 years. There are no overarching social themes or emotions. The tone is relaxed and instinctual. Based on a short play by Jane Bowles, “A Quarreling Pair” does not look at our time or the cultural history that shaped it. Instead, Mr. Jones and his scenic designer, Bjorn G. Amelan, delve into the central relationship and tone of this odd little four-page puppet play and then move through it, as through a magic mirror, into a complex, dreamlike world in which their imaginations run playfully, riotously wild.

The result is a funny, almost painfully tender theater-dance piece, performed Saturday at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University here as part of the theater’s Peak Performances series. “A Quarreling Pair” brings to brilliant life Miss Harriet and Miss Rhoda, elderly sisters who live together in a claustrophobic but intensely loving, solicitous relationship. Mr. Jones, who has long incorporated texts in his dances, takes some sensitive liberties with the 1945 play, allowing Miss Rhoda, the sister who wants to leave, to escape into the overwhelming world beyond her dollhouse existence.

City streets rush by and a horse appears and disappears, bound for freedom, too, perhaps, in Janet Wong’s handsome and evocative projected video, with live dancers slipping in and out of a melee subtly lighted by Robert Wierzel. Vaudeville becomes a gaudily confined parallel world, pushing Mr. Amelan and the costume designer, Liz Prince, to more and more happy excesses. Poor Miss Rhoda attempts a singing career and becomes a dresser for a vicious vaudeville performer. Often she pauses to call Miss Harriet on her cellphone. Mr. Jones somehow manages to balance the dizzying shifts in time and place, like bright juggling pins, in a richly textured and layered theatrical adventure.

Everything works, even the juxtaposition of songs that include Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and a tangy original score by Wynne Bennett, Christopher Antonio William Lancaster and George Lewis Jr.

Occasional bursts of canned applause framed and distanced the action in much the same way as Ms. Wong’s black-and-white photography. But one of the piece’s greatest pleasures was its immediacy as it plunged headfirst into rowdy proceedings, leaving the viewer to cling to Mr. Lewis as master of ceremonies, and to Mr. Jones as creator, who seemed to be speeding along on his own voyage of discovery, curious and almost childlike in his engagement.

Tracy Ann Johnson, who played both Harriet and Rhoda, gave the evening’s standout performance. As La Torita, an abusive drag diva, Erick Montes also stood out in the strong cast of 10 dancers.

Mr. Jones read the Bowles play in 1992 and let it percolate in the occasional workshop, but did not finally tackle it until his company’s residency at Montclair. “A Quarreling Pair” has the feel of a work that has lived and grown with Mr. Jones. It is a wonder.