Ballet: Ritual in Rock

A pair of spotlights, blue and red, rake the audience, while on the stage flickering, fleeting images play up and down a twisted backdrop that could suggest anything from a cavern to the corner of a mattress. One dancer (Maximiliano Zomosa) comes down the center aisle, up onto the stage, and slowly strips down to his shorts. Waiting for him, tightly sheathed in a paisley leotard, is Astarte (Trinette Singleton), goddess of the moon, love and fertility.

In the pit, a rock-'n'-roll quintet, its sounds brutally amplified, screeches and howls. The dancers enact...