Philip Hamilton, one of the most vivid of today's dance composers, provides the music.
"If you look at the history of music in the 20th century, so many great composers were also dance composers," said Mr. Peck, Mr. Jasperse's collaborator.
The Allegro non troppo is a relentless, cheerless dance (the composer, the program notes tell us, once called it "The Forces of War Unleashed"); the last movement is dark and full of questions.
Gergiev caught the grim mood of the "Symphonic Dances," the composer's valedictory statement; the final movement, with its allusions to the Dies Irae, was propulsive, even brutal.
The new system gives more prominence to electronic dance music composers, like Skrillex, Avicii and M-83, whose online fame has yet to translate into airplay.
AMON TOBIN The electronic dance-music composer has made an album, "Isam," of sounds that don't come from real instruments; he's designed a full-immersion experience to tour his new album "Isam," with visuals mapping out the sound; it will blow minds at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn for two nights.
A foxtrot to open may seem like easing an audience in gently, but this was John Adams's The Chairman Dances, the composer's initial exploration of the themes on which he would base his opera about Richard Nixon's 1973 visit to China.
Over the years, there have been several important Italian dance music composers and producers, such as Giorgio Moroder, who won three Academy Awards for his music.
And although the operas of Verdi and Wagner contain dance sequences, neither composer appears to have been attracted to ballet.
"A half-dozen lively song and dance sequences explore composer Stu Barker's passion for tango and bossa nova - admittedly with dire lyrics to match," wrote John Thaxter in The Stage.
