“Plain boiled rice I find much tastier than rice covered with a multitude of sauces,” the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker once said about her ambitious and austere 2017 dance set to Bach’s cello suites. “I find it hard to endure junk at my age.”

The age? 59. The work? “Mitten Wir Im Leben Sind/Bach6Cellosuiten” (“In the Midst of Life/Bach’s Cello Suites”), performed by her company, Rosas, and the cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, at N.Y.U. Skirball on Thursday night and named after the opening words of a Martin Luther chorale: “In the midst of life, we are in death.” A live dance is like that, too, dying a little more with every passing move.

Ms. De Keersmaeker appears intent on using choreography to strip away, to get at the essence of her art. It also seems as though she’s looking back on her years spent both making and performing significant dances.

It’s important to know that she is a presence in this two-hour excavation of Bach’s six glorious cello suites. Yes, there are dancers in this work, but only two stars: Ms. De Keersmaeker and Mr. Queyras, who plays onstage.