Chunky Move's Antony Hamilton would never be content with finding a good idea and simply sticking with it.
"There's no reason for me to make anything unless it doesn't exist in the world yet and it needs to exist," he told AAP.
In the renowned company's latest dance work titled 4/4, the Chunky Move dancers have pushed themselves to develop the most technically demanding work they have ever done, according to Hamilton.
During an arduous rehearsal process, he stripped back choreography to its formal essentials - the idea of using bodies to carve out time and space.
At the same time, Hamilton played with an approach that's almost the opposite, with choreography a medium to build imaginary worlds that can address big philosophical questions.
A dance developed in this way could be, well, anything at all really, so Hamilton imposed some constraints to start.
4/4 sees eight dancers onstage in two groups of four, playing off each other to make a kind of duet for two groups.
The staging and dancers are monochrome, while the soundtrack is built around the simple, repetitive beat of a metronome.
A soundscape of rhythms for the piece is by Alisdair Macindoe and this alone should have dance aficionados excited.
The dancer/choreographer was Hamilton's collaborator on the 2015 dance piece MEETING, which played for three years around the world and won a prestigious Bessie award in New York.
Will 4/4 reach the same heights?
With opening night Tuesday, audiences can decide if Hamilton's latest experiment has produced results that are as exciting as his last collaboration with Macindoe, and as Hamilton hopes, entirely new.
"I've always wanted to create experiences that are unlike anything else, unlike anything that anyone's ever experienced before," he said.
"Whether that's a success or not, is really up to other people."
4/4 runs from Tuesday until Saturday at Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne.
