So the dancers, some from Ms. Dembélé’s Compagnie Rualité, have been enlisted to move the story along and shape the stage environment throughout. In the third act, for example, after the master-slave love quadrangle, a break dancer performs rapid head and hand glides center stage. This sequence is usually a happy celebration for the couples, but these whirlwind turns feel like they reject that narrative. The entire chorus then walks onstage. When a diverse group of children steps out of the crowd and starts moving in hip-hop shuffles and steps, the dance seems to transform the scene into one of community and belonging.

Some choreographed, stylized gestures accompany the singing, as is the tradition in opéra-ballet. But Ms. Dembélé has given the dancers broad liberty in their solos: “We’re waiting for the part where we can bust out into our own thing, with total freedom,” Cal Hunt, a flex dancer in the cast, said in a telephone interview.

Dancers of street and club styles, including vogueing, house, break, flex and electro have joined some of the original krumpers from Mr. Cogitore’s film. Ms. Dembélé said that these forms, unlike the decorative divertissements of Rameau’s time, “resonate with what’s going on in the street. They developed as a means of survival.”

“In the movement of the body, we can give expression to what we have lived,” she added. “I have to confront my own frustration, and the frustration of new generations who have not found their place. Gathering people through dance transforms that anger so we can tell these forgotten stories.”

It is believed that Ms. Dembélé, whose parents are from Senegal, is the first black female and first black French choreographer to be engaged by the Paris Opera in its 350-year history. But this has gone unmentioned in the company’s publicity materials, as well as in the mainstream French press.

France’s model of universalism largely ignores the particularities of racial identity; the word “race” was struck from the constitution last year. Yet this model of assimilation has been widely perceived as failing immigrant communities, overlooking the historical use of race as a category in the country’s former colonies.