It’s early on the West Coast, and I’m still trying to shake the cobwebs from my brain as I’m connected to Marie Chouinard, who’s taking a break from rehearsal at her Montreal studio. After some brief pleasantries, I break the ice by noting that it’s difficult to discuss choreography you haven’t yet seen.

“Ah, that’s true,” says Chouinard, speaking affably enough in lightly accented English. “And it’s always hard to speak about a piece when it’s not yet done.”

Then she laughs.

Chouinard, by the way, has a wonderful laugh: part silvery peal and part witchy cackle. And it’s clear from her tone that even if The Golden Mean (Live)—which features a cast of 12 and makes its world premiere at the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday and Saturday (March 12 and 13)—remains a work in progress, things are going well.

The choreographer has never been short of confidence, charisma, or imagination. And you can add daring to that list too. While Chouinard’s new work is unlikely to have the shock appeal of her early solos, it does find her exploring new terrain—part of it in the form of a long and steeply raked catwalk that extends from the stage into the audience. (Some viewers will get to go where few have gone before, as they’ll be seated on the stage itself.)

On that level, The Golden Mean (Live) is all about breaking the picture plane to create a work that exists in three-dimensional space—for the audience as well as the performers.

“And at the same time,” Chouinard says, “we recognize that everybody will see a different show. For example, that platform that is going into the audience? People who are on the left side of that platform are not seeing the dancers from the same angle as the people who are seated on the other side of that platform. But every angle is part of the piece.”

Those angles, she explains, are derived in part from her research into the Renaissance notion of the “golden ratio”, which posits a mathematical explanation for why some human creations—certain geometrical figures, paintings, and buildings—seem so harmonious and pleasing to the eye.

“Even in nature you find that proportion very often, for example in the petals of a flower or something like that,” Chouinard says. “You can even find it in the spiral of a galaxy. So it is a number that is strangely omnipresent—and it’s really creating a strange thing when you start playing with that number, because it’s like there’s a never-ending unfolding of games and tricks [you can play] with that number.”

In creating the score for The Golden Mean (Live), composer and long-time Compagnie Marie Chouinard mainstay Louis Dufort has made explicit use of the golden ratio, using it to define the proportions of his music. Chouinard’s approach, on the other hand, is more intuitive, as she willingly admits.

“It’s not a question of telling yourself, ”˜I will create a painting according to that number,’ ” she says. “But then when you analyze your painting, very often it is happening like that—especially for pieces that are well constructed.

“And I must say that I’m a natural!” she adds. “When Louis puts his music on my sequences—because he creates the music after I create the choreography—he realizes that my sequences, they are according to those proportions. It does not happen every moment, but it happens often enough that it’s very strange.”

With just a few minutes left before Chouinard has to return to rehearsal, I ask if there’s anything else she’d like to get across.

“Just make it that people think they absolutely have to see this piece,” she says, “because it’s the most avant-garde and brilliant and human piece that’s going to be offered in Vancouver this year.”

She pauses for a second, then laughs yet again.

“And humorous also,” she adds. “And humorous.”