Forget the scenario in which the dancer performs on a platform severed from the audience, with the latter watching the show from a distance. Swap it for one in which, with tremendous collective energy and charged urgency, a group of dancers also inhabits the space allotted to the audience, or, an arrangement in which the audience sits or stands rather loosely around the dancers to piece together a vibrant and extraordinary dancer-viewer whole. They are in the same circle of light, both gazing and being gazed at, at the same time.

For CieLaroque — an Austrian contemporary dance company brought to Calcutta for two performances recently at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity by Pickle Factory — choreography is an interactive experience in which the audience plays a significant part. In fact, in an intrepid experiment, the dance outfit implicitly allows the audience the freedom to alter the course of — or in an extreme event, even ruin — a performance. If It’s All About conjured up the goosebumpy delight of making connections with other humans, As Far As We Are explored the limits of tolerance to its bone-chilling finale, in which the dancers offered themselves up to a horrific dénouement.

The innocent intelligence of It’s All About has three bodies moving through space in isolation, slowly gravitating towards one another. They interact with one another through extremes of speed and stasis, euphoria and despair, and when unable to contain themselves, they reach out to establish connections with the audience. They alter their reality and even come up with a new reality of their own.

In contrast with this happy piece, As Far As We Are conveys the menace of a sinister collapse in the fragmented dystopic present which is threateningly close to our own reality. Tightly choreographed and cleverly signified, it urges the audience to feel an ominous sense of being manipulated into undertaking a journey that transforms individuals into a frenzied mob painfully devoid of ethics and humanity.

On their Calcutta tour, CieLaroque offered two impactful pieces of exceptional power which, alas, were viewed by shamefully small audiences. Surely, Calcutta can do better?