Dance just got all sexypants. Forget about Benjamin Walker’s tight jeans in “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”: The mysterious hunk who shows up in form-fitting leather trousers in “Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake” is the tall dark stranger this town had been waiting to meet. What if he also doubles as a badass swan? Interspecies love isn’t a problem at the ballet.

I’d liked bits and pieces from the previous shows by Bourne I’d caught — “Edward Scissorhands” and “Play Without Words” — but hadn’t been bowled over. On the other hand, I absolutely loved his choreography for “Mary Poppins,” one of the most underrated musicals of the past few years. So I was glad to finally discover the work that put him on the map back in 1995. 

I’m a theater critic, not a dance one, so that’s how I’m looking at this “Swan Lake.” First of all, let’s remember that it played Broadway in 1998, which sounds far-fetched in our current of age of artistic skittishness. It feels as if dance as become the embarrassing stepchild Broadway doesn’t know what to do with these days. If you’re not Twyla Tharp or something like the ballroom extravaganza “Burn the Floor,” you don’t stand a chance. Dancing even feels like an afterthought in too many musicals — numbers are just plopped there, as if nobody had the ambition to come up with dances that fulfill a storytelling as well as emotional role. (Among the exceptions in recent memory was Rob Ashford’s unjustly neglected work in “Cry-Baby.”) A theory: This is one of Sondheim’s legacies in that the narrative-heavy, fully integrated scores he writes leave no space for narrative-heavy, fully integrated dance numbers. Discuss.

Anyway, “Swan Lake” is at City Center until November 7, and I highly recommend it even if you think you don’t like full-length story ballets. Is it theater or dance? What matters is that it’s a great story, told wonderfully.

Bourne set the story in a hybrid of the 1950s (for the costumes) and the 1960s (particularly the scene at Club Swank, with its high-energy frug-like moves). But of course a big departure from your usual “Swan Lake” — in addition to the dancing itself — is that the swans are played by men. They may wear feathery breeches, but these are masculine, nasty swans. When they swarm around the lonely, melancholy Prince (Simon Williams in the cast I saw), it feels like a gang of juvenile delinquents, sexy in their arrogance and potential violence — promise or threat?

I’m not sure who else in the mainstream delivers such as perfect mix of dance and theater as Bourne. Which means he really requires a cast that can act. In the performance I saw, Nina Goldman as the Queen and Madelaine Brennan at the Girlfriend were perfect examples of that approach. The latter was simply hilarious, misbehaving with relish at the show-within-a-show during which Bourne spoofs Romantic ballets.

Bourne is informed — he knows his history of dance — and he can do funny, but he also delivers both catch-in-throat pas de deux and propulsive ensemble work. The latter is particularly illustrated by the menacing swans when we first see them in a city park, as well as by the energy that courses in the night-club scene (which reminded me in spirit of the fabuloso “Rhythm of Life” number in the movie of “Sweet Charity”).

And the show looks great thanks to Lez Brotherston’s sets, which manage to be oversize and spare, and witty costumes. Kudos also to whoever came up with the Queen’s Bride of Frankenstein ‘do (my program doesn’t credit anybody for hair and makeup).