A Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM production. At the Cultch on Wednesday, May 11. Continues until May 14

There are moments of pure, dancerly choreography in The You Show that remind you what a formidable talent Crystal Pite is. Her Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM members swivel their midsections like they have double-jointed spines and bend backward into endless, gorgeous falls.

But then there are the strokes of warped, hilarious brilliance that show why she can pack houses like the Cultch for a sold-out run as easily as she can the theatres of Germany and France. This is the same woman who’s given us murderous puppets (Dark Matters) and terrified astronauts (“Farther Out”). Now, the final piece on this mixed program, “A Picture of You Flying”, finds a reluctant superhero (Jermaine Maurice Spivey, in a homemade blanket cape) kung-fu fighting with bad guys and juggling relationship problems. In the most inspired sequence, he and Sandra Marí­n Garcia spar like Robocop-Transformers, with the other members of the corps hoisting them and mechanically becoming legs, gun-arms, and shields. It has to be seen to be believed. In another scene, our hero saves the day, dragging a tangled knot of eight bodies in slow motion.

In true Pite fashion, “Flying” manages to be funny but deep. Much of the humour comes from Spivey, who addresses the audience directly with deadpan lines like “There’s power in the tights.” After the cartoony Transformers-style sequence, Pite echoes the same movements more gracefully in a dance by Garcia and the corps that’s all intensity and sorrow—a reflection of the dissolving relationship between her and her caped crusader. Pite is telling us that we are all, in some way, superheroes in our everyday struggles. And it hits a pretty epic emotional climax.

The other standout work of the evening is “The Other You”, an extremely fine-tuned duet that finds Eric Beauchesne and Ji?í­ Pokorní½ at first mirroring each other’s movements in the dim light, then starting to manipulate each other’s bodies, and eventually falling into conflict. With shaved heads and black suits, the two men look alike, and it becomes apparent that they are two sides of the same self. The movement ranges from the subtle—one moving the other’s head from afar, cradling it invisibly as the other man’s head bows—to the violent: there are bloodcurdling silent screams and the men yank each other across the room by the backs of their coats. Pite’s able to draw out the male energy and inner conflict on this one.

Elsewhere on the program, the show’s only remount, “A Picture of You Falling”, is a yearning, aching duet about love between Peter Chu and Anne Plamondon, set to a voice-over in the second person. (“This is a picture of you, falling”¦.This is how you collapse.”) There’s a point where his hand mimes his heart pounding out of his chest and onto the floor, and you can almost see the organ throbbing there. “Das Glashaus”, featuring Yannick Mathon and Cindy Salgado, is a less focused and more physical take on love, but it has stunning shattered-glass-like lighting and sound. And the ending, which finds a distraught Salgado whispering frantically in the blue-ish spotlight, is soul-shaking.

Pite is a talent, for sure, but she’s also assembled an incredibly gifted, textured troupe of dancers—not to mention the always mesmerizing scores by Owen Belton and that moodily artful lighting by Robert Sondergaard. The key to The You Show is its intimacy, and the chance to see this kind of work—with its highs of hilarity and depths of heartbreak—at the Cultch did not escape arts-goers this week, who are packing the theatre to its rafters.