Thierry Malandain’s “Creation” starts with a big bang. The lights flash on and off, and Adam and Eve step out, ready to begin the march of human existence. Joined by a small community, the primal pair encounters watershed epochs and aesthetics in the development of theatrical dance.

Performed by the 16-member troupe Ballet Biarritz on Tuesday night at the Joyce, “Creation” is the latest entertainment to visit New York in the apparently now-canonical 70-minuteswithout-intermission format. The dancers keep their powder dry at all times, though, fielding whatever is thrown at them and remaining in a state of high-keyed alertness.

Ballet Biarritz is not a ballet company except in the generic sense of the word.The dancers evince a foundation in ballet training, but the choreographer isn’t interested in ballet protocol or physical archetypes. They conform much closer to a modern dance troupe – Paul Taylor’s comes to mind – in their simultaneous heterogeneity of physical types and the way they subsume into an organic, tribal unit.

The women don’t dance on pointe. The dancers are a motley crew, all shapes and sizes, from tall and eccentric to short and satyrish. The dancers exaggerate the tautness of classical ballet to the point of a muscular clench. Their legs drub and dribble, they spin and paddle on the ground, bounce on the balls of their feet, and perform shiva-position hops and zany pogo-stick jumps. Their unflagging exertions make “Creation” winning.

So too do Mr. Malandain’s conceptual ruminations. The dance vocabulary of “Creation” is eclectically imbued with quotations from classic dance moments. It evokes parallel wellsprings of human behavior and dance creation.

The dancers perform plies, which can be construed as Square 1 of ballet technique; next they jump and fling their arms in contracted ape-like shapes. It’s not long before two women in hoop skirts appear from opposite wings, avatars of the Baroque dance that proceeded ballet’s adoption of pointe work. Moving on to the Romantic ballet of the 19th century, the ensemble recapitulates some iconic steps from “Giselle.” The dawn of the 20th century is announced when a dancer playing Loie Fuller enters wielding her characteristic butterfly-wing costume contraptions. Fuller was famous for movement that activated billowing fabric and special effects. Her contemporary, Isadora Duncan, enters at the same time and spins across the stage in characteristically maenad-like rapture. And the unique releve-heelthrust walk from Martha Graham’s “Primitive Mysteries” is all over “Creation.”

The piece is constructed as much from duets as from tribal ensembles. The partnering owes a great deal to tumbling, with lifts that are splayed out and cantilevered. The vocabulary is not overly gender-specific, and the dancers wear unisex costumes throughout “Creation,” beginning with black maillots and concluding with beige cut-off unitards. During the Romantic ballet segment, it’s not only the women who wear the tulle: Men, too, wear filmy skirts over their second-skin leotards, but then both sexes slip out of them and deposit them on the floor as they walk off stage.

Dance’s postmodern epoch following World War II is signified when an inflated vinyl beach ball becomes the fulcrum of a duet between one man and woman. “Creation” concludes with humankind’s loss of innocence as evidenced by the story of Cain and Abel. The cast appears in single file from the downstage left wing. The dancers walk over Abel’s supine body, backing Cain toward the opposite upstage wing, until he suddenly bolts into their midst and is thus lost in the crowd. There follows a final processional and a full-circle return to the biblical dawn in the renewed presence of Adam and Eve.

The music to which “Creation” is performed, Beethoven’s “The Creatures of Prometheus,” is integral to the historical survey. It’s one of only two scores Beethoven wrote particularly for ballet, although choreographers have used him – usually at their artistic peril – in many other instances.

“The Creatures of Prometheus” was choreographed in 1801 by Salvatore Vigano. Today one wonders how dancers of that age coped with the speed and wind-tunnel pressure of the score, or indeed, what tempos were observed at the time. Mr. Malandain realizes that the only way to survive Beethoven is by ignoring him frequently, adhering to the beats and phrase durations without attempting to compete with the orchestration or massive symphonic architecture.

Until Sunday (175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, 212-242-0800).