Robbin’s “The Cage” followed, a primal proto-feminist ballet choreographed in 1951 to Igor Stravinsky’s 1946 Concerto in D for String Orchestra and staged by Diana White. Here, a colony of female insects must defend their Amazonian colony from male intruders. In particular, the Novice, danced by Kate Inoue, daughter of the Queen, Paige Wilkey, must be put to the test when her first male victim, danced by Felipe Zapiola, barges into their matriarchal den. Inoue slaps around and pounds Zapiola into the ground. However, the real test comes from the Second Intruder, performed by Nick Sedano. Alone to defend her tribe, Inoue dances with and eventually falls in love and mates with the Intruder, exploring his physicality in a series of partnering contortions. That is until the tribe discovers them together and the Queen sets matters straight. When the Novice inevitably finds her primal instincts and finishes the job, she is once again embraced in good standing with the tribe. 

The ballet arrived just in time for Halloween, thanks to its costumes designed by Rush Sobotka and provided by San Francisco Ballet, and the women’s hair pulled taut and fierce over their heads. The set design by Jean Rosenthal includes a neon spider web concept hovering with menace above the alien colony. The ballet’s exploration of awakened sexuality versus tribal allegiance ends in a sacrifice of the individual to a collective duty. 

Its study of animalism and instinctual violence, the ballet demands the dancers use every aspect of their bodies, mouths, fingers and torso to rid themselves of whatever human defects they still possess. Inoue’s fierce virtuosity, sharp crackles of the head and swings of the leg, move so quickly as to be rendered blurs in space. Fittingly to its alien nature, the choreography itself is sometimes too much for the human eye register.