Shanahan and co breeze their way through a stream of vignettes, some dapper, some daffy. The work pulses with sex in its varying incarnations: joyous, messy, daunting, menacing. Necks are nuzzled; laps are bounced on; stilettos are slipped on and off. An audience member is invited to unzip a dress. We never stray far from offbeat comedy, serenely delivered: chirpy forays into the stalls, a goofy wink from Nazareth Panadero as she tucks a plastic bag into her bosom, “for later.” But Bausch slips in the tension laterally. A woman is led by her ponytail like a horse on a lunge line. Another’s skirt is yanked up in a split-second act of violence—or is it just a wacky joke? Shrewdly rendered, such dynamics toe the edge of droll and disturbing, the script forever poised to flip.

In a climactic, iterative motif, Shanahan dashes downstage only to dragged back by two of the cast’s three men. “Julie!” someone shouts from the wings as she charges again and again, wearier each time. The second half of the show leans into these darker moments, the levity slanted, flung to abandon and bordering on manic. All the while, the curtains swell in sync with the swivelling, tilting choreography—sails that engulf and reveal. An ambient soundtrack drifts in and out without fuss, wafting between the punchy and the poignant.

Idiosyncratic but accessible, farcical but affecting—these combos aren’t for everyone, but you can’t deny the electricity of the sparring, and the eye for voluptuous aesthetic. As ever, individual scenes have stuck with me long after the curtain: the cast bouncing across the diagonal on all fours; a trio crouching behind the curtains to create cradles in the clouds; the whole female ensemble quarter-mooning their skirts with one hand, tracing circles in a leisurely, sumptuous waltz. It’s splendid to soak it all in.