"I saw this woman having this spontaneous moment letting her dog off the leash," McIntyre says, noting that the dog bolted after said critter.

But Chasing Squirrel, McIntyre readily admits, has another, X-rated, connotation.

So it will be a sexy chase, full of fast-and-furious-footwork on the stage of Procter & Gamble Hall, and thanks to McIntyre's fondness for the Kronos Quartet's CD Nuevo, it will be performed to a distinctly Latin beat.

McIntyre knew next to nothing about Latin culture when he and designer Sarah Woodall started kicking around ideas for a setting for the ballet. The deeper they dug into art, fashion and movies, the clearer it was that it had to be New York in the '70s.

"It was the era that had the most fun and ribald sexuality."

The choreographer took things that related to the concept - "photos, films, random associations that create bigger images" - into the studio with him "like a treasure chest."

What comes out of his treasure chest are ladies sashaying in sexy disco wear and mucho macho men, all of them enveloped in a hot, bold color scheme.

For McIntyre, Chasing Squirrel is equal parts brain and libido. It's playful and inventive, but he sees the dance as a chance to "abstract the elements of the (Latin) culture ... and create a world of heightened sexuality and power struggle. A constant negotiation of who's in charge." He thinks that's essentially universal.

This is a dance of mutual chases, and the dancers are both human and representations of those four-legged Central Park inspirations. "The dog came to be the man and the squirrel the woman metaphorically, but there's another layer when the woman consciously released the dog off its leash to chase the squirrel," says McIntyre. "That's all working together in the piece."

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com