On February 4, 1903, something lucky happened to Edwin Denby: He was born.

I have a condition. I’ve been suffering—more and more, recently—from “dance blackout.” Usually it occurs at perfectly respectable contemporary dance performances. I’ll be watching some blandly pleasant movement and suddenly realize that several minutes have gone by without a memorable moment, a moment of jolting veracity—that I haven’t once been engaged, excited, awakened.

When working in small blackbox theaters, dancers are confronted with a necessary choice: acknowledge audience members, who are near enough to touch, or find a way to erect the proverbial fourth wall.

As a principal dancer with both the Kirov Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, she has danced nearly every traditional ballerina role. A show featuring Vishneva, with her cornucopia of classical experience, in a more experimental mode promised to be interesting.

These 2,500 ballet fans were the fortunate percentage of the rumored 10,000 who had, two weeks earlier, swamped a special ticketing Web page that New York City Ballet had set up for fans to attend two open dress rehearsals of Susan Stroman’s Double Feature, a Broadway-style romp of a ballet. Another 2,500 would attend a second act rehearsal the following day.