Say ta-ta to tutus as modern dance makes way for the ravers

Good-bye pink tutu, hello day-glo body paint. Ballet gets a faddish make-over with techno-fantasy production Rave, an ecstatic, hypnotic fusion of catwalk posturing, break dancing, kung fu fighting and classical ballet.

Staged by France's contemporary dance company, CCN-Ballet de Lorraine next week, as part of Le French May, Rave is the brainchild of US choreo-grapher and former Balanchine ballerina Karole Armitage.

'Rave was inspired by the idea that the body has a universal grammar,' she says. 'You have two knees, two arms. I wanted to combine different moves with ballet in an organic, physical, logical way, as an intellectual dance idea. It's a piece where the borders disappear and all these things intersect.'

That should make more sense on viewing the production, which turns a street carnival into performance art. Twenty-four dancers - chromatically painted and barely clothed in fur, feathers and fishnet - kick, gyrate, spin and leap to an electro throb composed by Armitage's long-time collaborator, David Shea, who mixes techno, jungle, house, ambient and lounge. Like those battery-operated puppets that oscillate to tonal vibrations, the dancers move fluidly from one tempo to another, adjusting their moves to suit the music. Such exotic rhythms demand more than pirouettes and plies.

To train dancers in the required techniques, including that 1980s dancefloor staple 'voguing', Armitage - who has also choreographed the music videos of Madonna and Michael Jackson - says she recruited 'kids from the ghetto' in New York and members of what she calls the 'gay underworld', as well as kung fu and catwalk teachers.

'They have an incredible virtuoso refinement [and] hyper concise control of the body, so there is a real kinship with the discipline of ballet,' she says.