And sound: of gently clicking gears and brakes tightened until they squeaked.
With the pianist Cory Smythe as soloist, the work unfolded with a series of spare and stark gestures that eventually culminated in a sound of gently buzzing bees.
Humus, the second work, is set to Brian Eno's Neroli, an eerie vestigial piece of ambient sound that gently binds the nine women into a collective.
In a 2008 review of a performance of it at Sadler's Wells in London, the Guardian described "an eerie vestigial piece of ambient sound that gently binds" the dancers "into a collective".
They still serve up a decent Ulster fry in the main dining room of the Donard, but you eat it accompanied by the elegant chink of silver-plated spoons against breakfast china and the sound of gently rustled newspapers.
The college is reached via an unspectacular new bridge over the Regent's Canal; but, instead of the sound of gently lapping waters, there is the pounding of pneumatic drills, the thrum of heavy plant machinery, the sound of digging, lifting, thumping and dropping.
Diners enter through wooden pagoda-style doors and walk a path lined with plants, lanterns and Japanese artifacts to the secluded garden, which is bordered by rhododendron, shaded by trees, with its and soothed by the sound of gently trickling water.
But Dr Miller and Dr Dunbar may be right that even if it originally was an accident, it has subsequently been exploited by evolution and made functional.Part of that accident may be the fact that many natural sounds evoke emotion for perfectly good reasons (fear at the howl of a wolf, pleasure at the sound of gently running water, irritation and mother-love at the crying of a child).
Even so, as we began to hear the sound of gently tinkling water, Dhit invited us to remove our walking boots and change into our sandals: it was time to get wet.
