Have you ever noticed how a film-set clapperboard snaps shut like the mouth of a shark? The Belgian-Colombian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa has.

“Tiburones” (“Sharks”), Ms. Lopez Ochoa’s new work for Ballet Hispánico , takes place on a movie set, evoked by lights, camera and a male authority figure snapping a clapperboard imperiously. The dancers around him also snap — their fingers. “Tiburones” is a critique of “West Side Story,” and the legitimate question it asks, in a toothless way is: Who are the real sharks?

In “West Side Story,” you might recall, the Puerto Rican gang is called the Sharks. “Tiburones,” which premiered on Friday during Ballet Hispánico’s annual performances at the Apollo Theater, questions the authenticity of representation in the 1957 musical and 1961 film — a hot issue once again as next year brings Steven Spielberg’s remake and a Broadway revival, with new dances by a Belgian choreographer, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.