How did we get here? How did we get to the point where just about every new classical dance is meaningless? Today, premieres at the big ballet companies come dressed in the hippest costumes on the hottest bodies. They boast an haute frame of reference and wear the zeitgeist like a thong. Some of these premieres push the right buttons and generate enough enthusiasm to radiate success, while others push the wrong buttons and disappear after a season or two. No matter what the buttons, there’s not much difference between good and bad. Your average state-of-the-art premiere is so derivative of Forsythe, Tharp, or Martins that it feels secondhand (even when the ballets actually are by Forsythe, Tharp, or Martins, they feel secondhand). Or it tends to trade in age-old clichés.

One might almost think that company directors are actively seeking sameness—last year’s moderate success recalibrated with a machine-tooled tweak or a downtown shrug or a Euro-inflected gaze into the abyss. No, you tell yourself, it can’t be that. And then comes the next premiere, and it’s another work that looks as if it were hurriedly made of pre-fab parts. If these dances were houses, no one would be able to live in them. And no one does. They have no ceilings, no windows, no doors. Another way of putting it is that choreographers no longer seem to know what their ballets are about. Then again, I’m not sure ballets are trying to be “about” anything anymore.