For her latest work, Make Your Own World, choreographer Lucy Guerin has cast some of Melbourne’s most talented independent dancers. It’s an impressive roster of highly articulate and intuitively rhythmic movers who each contribute something singular and personal. Through clever choreographic structures, Guerin has harnessed the individuality of these dancers to produce a richly textured work that resists theatricality in favour of intricate composition.

Make Your Own World. Photograph © Pippa Samaya

At its most simple, the work showcases the artistic personalities of six intelligent dancers – Tra Mi Dinh, Benjamin Hancock, Rebecca Jensen, Alisdair Macindoe, Jessie Oshodi and Lilian Steiner. The choreography moves in and out of tightly edited improvisational scores, allowing us to see the dancers’ habitual movement erupting from cleanly executed passages of set material. The change is sometimes subtle but other times unpredictable, creating tension between the formal and informal structures at play.

The set choreography is highly articulate, gestural and fast, almost all of it slickly executed by the ensemble. Guerin seems to be playing with scale. Very small repetitive movements, like the gentle tapping of toes on demi-pointe or seductive swivelling of hips, are intercut...