In August 1986, the so-called preppy murder made national headlines.

Robert Chambers, a teenage private school student, strangled 18-year-old Jennifer Levin to death.

Chambers pled not guilty and said that he was defending himself from Levin because she was pressuring him for sex.

But people weren't buying it.

So he changed his plea to guilty and was charged with manslaughter.

This story caused a lot of waves.

It raised questions about teenage drug and alcohol use.

It shined a light on victims' rights,

and it challenged people's notions of consent and violence. But Peter Martens, the soon-to-be-souled

ballet master at the New York City Ballet, well, he had a different reaction.

Two years later in 1988, Martin's choreographed a ballet called Tonspiel, which roughly

translates to dance game in German.

It featured two dancers, a man and a woman.

The man enters the stage first and the woman approaches him from behind.

She tries to grab his hand and he pulls away, but she doesn't stop.

She continually grabs him and he recoils.

She even hangs on him, but she falls.

Then, to put an end to her nuisance, he seemingly strangles her to death and dances around her

lifeless body.

At this point, people were still filling the weight of Jennifer Levin's murder, and when

ballet goers witnessed the premiere of Ton Spiel, they were, well, shocked. But other than that,

the troubling choreography didn't cause major problems.

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