The Sarasota Ballet will open 2018 with a rare triple bill of modern dances, but the company really hopes to leave audiences seeing double.

Two of the dances in "Moving Identities," which opens Friday at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, will feature alternating casts of all-male and all-female performers. Sarasota balletomanes will be tempted to compare and contrast different visions of the same show.

“If you see the male cast, then you should see the female version — and vice versa,” says Iain Webb, artistic director of The Sarasota Ballet. “They’re going to be egging each other on, for sure. I’m hoping we’re getting to the point where the audience is going to want an encore.”

Dancers in the company groan when Webb says things like that, because “Troy Game,” a 1974 ballet by Robert North, is a grueling test of stamina. The Ballet has performed this dance before. It’s macho, physical and funny — over-the-top funny, with outlandish costumes, performers in pyramids and choreography that practically winks at the audience.

The Sarasota Ballet in Robert North's Troy Game fromThe Sarasota Ballet onVimeo.

That’s why the director enjoys the twist of an all-female cast.

“We’re at the point where it’s going up a notch,” Webb says with a grin. “There’s that little bit of play.”

For Samantha Benoit, one of the female dancers in “Troy Game,” the ballet has different and deeper levels of meaning. Staging it this year feels like perfect timing.

“It’s so ironically relevant to what’s going on in the world right now,” she says. “Women are really taking a stand and doing everything men are doing. It’s so funny and we’re so excited about doing it.”

Benoit is petite — 5-foot-2 and 97 pounds — which means she gets the comedic role of tiny dancer surrounded by much bigger and brawnier colleagues. She’s having fun. So are her friends.

“The women are ecstatic,” she says. “We can’t wait to see what the audience thinks of us.”

‘Little Waltzes’ in Portuguese

The other ballet with all-male and all-female casts is “Valsinhas,” which means “Little Waltzes” in Portuguese.

It was created by Ricardo Graziano, the Brazilian principal dancer who is also a choreographer for the Sarasota Ballet. Back in 2013, his all-male dance captured the attention of women in the company.

“They jokingly asked if they could do it and I was like, ‘You know what, I think that would work,’” he says. “That’s how it happened. I said, ‘OK, here it is, ladies. I’m not changing anything.’”

His ballet is performed to live music with a grand piano on stage. Dancers discover the piano and the Schubert waltzes that draw them around the stage.

Opening ‘Airs’

Performances of “Moving Identities” will open with “Airs,” one of the most classical-style pieces by Paul Taylor, the modern dance choreographer. It’s set to the baroque music of Handel with flowing movements, shifting circles and intersecting diagonal lines of dancers.

“You listen to the music and you see the dancers moving so in tune with it,” Webb says. “It’s got such fluidity.”

The Sarasota Ballet has performed other dances by Taylor, but this one is different. And it’s another physical test for the company.

“It’s so beautiful, but we’re working like crazy on stage,” Graziano says. “It’s supposed to be light and airy, but we have to be grounded, and we have to run around nonstop, and it has to be really fast.”

After Graziano performs in “Airs,” he will rush to shower and change so he can see alternating performances of “Valsinhas” from the rear of the theater.

Watching his own work can be nerve-wracking. He can’t be on stage. He can’t fix things.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Graziano says. “That is why I get so nervous.”