Theatre Junction GRAND has taken a lot of heat over the years for what some have felt was the extreme weirdness and inaccessibility of the unconventional pieces created by their resident company of artists. That’s fine; not everybody likes radical new art forms and sometimes experimental art is just that - an experiment.

Conversely, though, Theatre Junction has not received nearly enough praise for its commitment to bringing in a diverse array of performances by amazing touring companies. One such show was Under The Skin, a collaboration between Vancouver’s Wen Wei Dance and the Beijing Modern Dance Company.

Some of you will remember Wen Wei Dance from their visits to Calgary with Unbound in 2007 and Three Sixty Five in 2009. Purposeful contrasts highlighting personal, social, and cultural evolution continue to thread their way through this company’s visually startling works, still with a unique style all their own.

There are many who find modern dance intimidating and tend to stay away from shows. I, for one, have always tended to want to dissect such performances as they are happening, needing to know what every little gesture represents at every moment. Both ways of thinking are unnecessarily uptight. Having received the advice before Under The Skin to just let the movements wash over me, to let them evoke feeling and take me on a journey, I found this show to be an incredible experience.

Not long after the lights dimmed, I found myself lulled into deep relaxation by the pulsing score of rolling waves. Sinewy naked muscles contrasted with billowing white costumes as dancers moved together like schools of fish. They were fluid yet precise, languid yet deliberate; their movements were hypnotic, comforting, inspiring. At one point a chorus of bodies formed what looked like a giant sea anemone, its tentacles billowing in deep sea currents, and I honestly forgot that I was watching actual people. Amazing.

Having soothed its audience into an almost meditative state in the beginning of the piece, Under The Skin then upped the ante. The second half of the piece featured images of dancers’ faces projected on a giant screen high above the stage; giant marquee lights flooded the scene with an aggressive glare. Fluidity gave way to tension and anxiety, to explosive pacing and martial arts influenced battles. The unity and cohesion created in the first half of the piece were trampled, destroyed, just a memory. Emotions ran high.

This was all punctuated by moments of dark humor: video images of a duck waddling though a town square somewhere in China, juxtaposed with the images of ducks roasting and being sliced in a shop window.

Co-choreographers Wen Wei and Gao Yanjinzi intended this piece to be a cross-cultural exploration of that which divides us and that which unites us - "We are all the same under the skin," Wei has said in interviews - but the work is even more complex. The oceanic metaphors at the beginning called forth the dawn of civilization and evolution; the technological anxiety created at the end was straight out of 1984, a harbinger of the societal breaking point which may await us.

Years in development on two continents, this collaboration was well worth the wait.