12-28 Feb 2006. In The Cage, choreography by Jerome Robbins, and La Strada, choreography by Mario Pistoni. In Robbins The Cage, the set features a spidery web, and the music is the Concerto in D for String Orchestra by Stravinsky. The work opens with a group of about a dozen female dancers hovering over their fallen prey. As they drag it off stage, they split into two groups and we meet the Queen and the Novice. In the first variation hands and feet become claws and pincers. The Novice is wobbly at first after her birth, but stumbles gracefully. She then finds her feet and gains balance and confidence in this amazingly athletic role. Her body seems to move in sections as she bends at the waist, with legs stiff at the knees, and her arms, stiff at the elbows, extending at different angles. She glides effortlessly across the stage like this and her movement turns her into this terrifyingly elegant predatory mantis-like creature. After killing the first intruder, shes captivated by the second. She alternately attacks, then melts into him in a sensuously seductive pas-de-deux.