I would use a Hierarchical Viewer with a Hierachical Transformation.
In the second level which contains the content for the modal, I would wrap it in a div that is hidden with a class "modal."
In the first level, I would add an onclick event handler that will open the modal popupl such as onclick="OpenModal(this);"
function OpenModal(ctrl){
var modal = $(ctrl).find('modal');
model.dialog();
}