Twyla Tharp’s new work, “Rabbit and Rogue,” is the latest in the sequence of blockbuster dances with which she has filled the ballet stage since the early 1980s. Given its world premiere by American Ballet Theatre on Tuesday, the new ballet has a retrospective and recapitulatory feel; she peoples the stage with allusions to works she’s done for her own company and for ABT, dating back to her first company commission, “Push Comes to Shove,” in 1976.

In “Rabbit and Rogue,” Ms. Tharp also continues the themes of her recent Bob Dylan musical, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” with references to the circus, knockabout clowning, and rivalries between old and young big-tent residents. Here, that adds up to a running theme of generational tensions between Herman Cornejo and Ethan Stiefel, played out in a series of rapid-fire comic exchanges. Mr. Stiefel takes no prisoners; Mr. Cornjeo gestures in defensive befuddlement. In addition to Mr. Cornejo and Mr. Stiefel, there are two lead couples: first Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg, and then, arriving later, Paloma Herrera and Gennadi Saveliev, as well as a quartet consisting of Yuriko Kajiya, Maria Riccetto, Carlos Lopez, and Craig Salstein. And there’s a 12-member ensemble to boot.

The music is by Hollywood’s Danny Elfman. According to a recent report, it was Mr. Elfman who approached Ms. Tharp with the idea of a collaboration. Ms. Tharp was raised in California, epicenter of popular culture, which she has mined and transmuted throughout her career. Perhaps inevitably, this comes along with a fascination with Tinseltown, which is part and parcel of her sometimes overinvestment in mainstream visibility and acclaim. I think that an approach from a Hollywood commodity as proven as Mr. Elfman would have been hard for her to decline. His score gives her a strong and varied rhythmic platform, essential to a choreographer for whom tap dance has been a primary influence. But cinematic atmospherics that are subjected to concert treatment on this orchestral scale and at this length produce monotony — albeit sometimes in the deliberately minimalist vein that Ms. Tharp explored in “In the Upper Room,” set to a Philip Glass score.

Indeed, at times, “Rabbit and Rogue” seems to be a sequal to “In the Upper Room.” In both works, people keep pouring out of a shadowy aperture at the back of the stage, changing their Norma Kamali costumes along the way. Here, wardrobe options range from racing-stripe workout suits to chiffon evening dresses.

Ms. Tharp’s work for ballet companies has demonstrated her keen desire to take things apart and see how they work — particularly the ballet dancer’s technique. She takes it apart and reconstructs it in her own way, and Mr. Stiefel has been a vital part of this process. A decade ago, he was great in “Known by Heart,” the ballet she made for ABT in 1998, and he was good in a revival of “Push Comes to Shove.” Mr. Cornejo has less experience with her work, and also less physical affinity for the strident edges of Ms. Tharp’s vocabulary. But the role that Ms. Tharp has given him cleverly writes a kind of search for identity into the kinetic text. Nevertheless, it seemed at first viewing that the best-choreographed sections in the ballet were the solos for Ms. Herrera, who manifests a more finely turned coordination than ever before. When Ms. Herrera pulls back the Tharpian vortex to display a characteristically balletic locution, it registers as a fresh turn of the page in Ms. Tharp’s long, complex, and ambivalent response to ballet.

Tuesday night’s opening began with a revival of Harald Lander’s “Etudes.” Like Ms. Tharp’s work, but in a completely different way, it takes the balletic body to the brink of what is humanly possible. On Tuesday, the ensemble men were considerably better than they’d been in the excerpts performed at ABT’s opening night gala last month, when the women were the best part of the performance. The three leads — Xiomara Reyes, Sascha Radetsky, and Jared Matthews (replacing the originally scheduled Angel Corella) — each had their moments, but often seemed to be punching above their technical weight.