Ballet Preljocaj at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Preljocaj Ballet The company in "And then, one thousand years of peace," at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj has been careful to clarify that his 2010 dance "And then, one thousand years of peace" is not a literal reading of the Book of Revelation. Rather, it is an impressionistic rendering of the emotions and sensations evoked by reading the New Testament's finale. In its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this past weekend, the dance seemed to reveal one thing: Mr. Preljocaj finds the Apocalypse a turn-on. Much of the two-hour work could be described as a soft-porn rendering of rough sex. The attractive dancers of Ballet Preljocaj grope and kiss and bite and spit blood. They slam one another against walls, embracing. In beautifully composed tableaus, they fornicate in groups. But that's not all. The dancers also carry books between their teeth. They wrap themselves in plastic sheets, like dry cleaning. Huge metallic boxes on wheels hem them in. Heavy metal chains rain down from the sky, crashing perilously close to bodies. This is not a dance short on spectacular visions. Igor Chapurin's costumes alternate between futuristic high fashion (headdresses like silver samovars, platform heels) and a look more suggestive of antiquity (white tunics, bare feet). The score, by the D.J. Laurent Garnier, mostly techno with a de rigueur ominous thrum, occasionally samples Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. And this all matches the fashion model posing and torqued classicism of Mr. Preljocaj's choreography. The work fields 21 lucid dancers, and Mr. Preljocaj is as skilled as St. John at mass effects. At times, the stage is alive with eight distinct layers of dance activity. He balances these group scenes with a profusion of duets for angels and demons, several of which could stand alone as striking dances. The elegance of a pointed foot crossed over the opposite knee is a keynote. Mr. Preljocaj's choreography is distinguished by a sequential articulation of parts. The dancers manipulate the segments of one another's bodies as if they were dolls, and they treat their own bodies that way, too. Men do this to women, and men do this to men. The power dynamics, continually turning sexual, continually shift. The rhythms of the work, however, rarely vary, and the serial structure, one episode or vision after another, becomes wearisome. Which leaves you to ponder the meanings of Mr. Preljocaj's revelations. During the group sex tableaus, the dancers wear national flags over their faces like S-and-M masks. Is this Caligula at the United Nations supposed to show how nationalism blinds us? How war is power is sex? And, at the end, when the dancers wash the flags in onstage sinks and spread them out like beach towels to dry, is this Mr. Preljocaj's vision of peace? Are the two live lambs that appear here to be taken seriously and connected to the angelic twosomes earlier in the work? Especially since, in the Bible, the thousand years of peace are followed by the release of Satan? In the Bible, the scroll that St. John eats is sweet in the mouth and bitter in the stomach. "And then, one thousand years of peace" is easy on the eye, and rather empty when ingested.