MANCHESTER, England — “This is our help,” Trajal Harrell said, introducing each of the 10 dancers in his ensemble at the start of his new “Maggie the Cat” at the Manchester International Festival, now in full swing here.

The statement wasn’t a casual one. “Maggie the Cat,” a Manchester commission, is inspired by Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1955), that hot-blooded Southern drama of family mendacity centered on the determined, vital Maggie. But Mr. Harrell’s account doesn’t offer the narrative of the play, or specifically evoke its main characters.

Instead, the servants, nearly invisible in Williams’s work, claim center stage, getting a flamboyant, sashaying, vogueing turn in the spotlight, where they glitter like newly minted stars.

Dance has never been a particular focus at the Manchester festival, dedicated to producing new work since it was founded in 2007. Its first director, Alex Poots, emphasized imaginative, often unlikely, high-octane collaborations that fell mostly in the domain of theater, music and visual art. John McGrath, who took over in 2015 when Mr. Poots left to run the Shed in New York, has continued in a similar vein. Dance, though, has played a stronger role this year, as an important component in two flagship shows (“Tree” and “Invisible Cities”), and in commissions from Mr. Harrell, FlexN & Young Identity and the Scottish choreographer Claire Cunningham.