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For the choreographer Christopher Williams, growing up in Syracuse, it was at a performance of “Les Sylphides,” recognized as the first ballet blanc, or plotless ballet.

A curious framing device — which sees these same three characters adopting different personae — gives “Ballet Blanc” a dreamlike quality.

Then there are movies such as writer-director Anne-Sophie Dutoit’s “Ballet Blanc,” which aim to upset viewers with unrelenting oddity.

For “Period” is pure, a kind of contemporary dance equivalent of a ballet blanc, that genre in which white costumes signify a shift toward abstract form.

All else disappears, and a battalion of whipped-creamlets, I guess you could call them, come in and do a ballet blanc, like the swans in “Swan Lake.”