When Michael Hodyl dances, he brings both physical strength and poise to his elegant gestures. A romantic at heart, he pictures a five-star restaurant and candles – always three – burning on the table between himself and his date.

“I pull out a chair for that lady in my dreams,” the long-time core member of Adelaide-based Restless Dance Theatre tells Limelight during a rehearsal break for Private View, a new work by Artistic Director Michelle Ryan.

Michael Hodyl in Restless Dance Theatre’s Private View. Photo © Matt Byrne

Premiering at Adelaide Festival in late February, audience members will be invited to voyeuristically peep through holes in a wall or through a gauze into four different rooms, revealing scenes of “hidden desires” that challenge attitudes toward sexuality and disability.

In Hodyl’s room, romance is paramount. The secret to charming a woman, he believes, is “good manners” to “make her comfortable with me”. At 33, Hodyl, who has Down syndrome, has grown accustomed to revealing his private yearning through his public self. For the company’s show Intimate Spaces in 2017 and 2018, audiences were invited into a darkened hotel guest...