Created by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, in collaboration with the performers. A Tara Cheyenne Performance production, presented by the Clutch. At the Cultch’s Historic Theatre on Wednesday, April 12. Continues until April 15

What a good time this show is, and what a good time to see it. How to Be is as fresh and invigorating as a springtime walk among the blossoms.

Vancouver choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is known for her playfulness. In How to Be, which was created in collaboration with the performers, she fuses dance and theatre to address the question that vexes most of us: am I doing this (life, or any aspect of it) right?

The piece opens with actor Marcus Youssef, who is not a trained dancer, awkwardly executing some steps. He’s soon joined on-stage by a group of more adept movers, who shift into a circle of empathy behind him as he takes turns in a compassionate listening exercise with dancer Susan Elliott. The hesitant confessions and sympathetic looks are hilarious because we can relate to them so easily.

The trap of self-consciousness, the struggle to connect meaningfully with others, and the halting habits we impose on ourselves—these ideas are manifested in a giddy variety of ways. Josh Martin surrenders to a beat for a few seconds, then stops, denying himself the pleasure of dancing. Justine A. Chambers reads out a long list of “shoulds”, her limbs repeatedly buckling under the burden and then recalibrating in slow motion. Kimberly Stevenson gives us some of the evening’s funniest moments: in one sequence, she runs around giving enthusiastic compliments to all her fellow performers; later, she becomes a frenzied choreographic drill sergeant. In one sequence, as Youssef warns about disappointment in love, the other six performers entangle and disentangle their bodies into endlessly beautiful shapes.

All the performers (Bevin Poole and Kate Franklin round out the cast) embrace the piece’s unconventional structure, whose boundary between performers and audience is as porous as that between the authentic self and the one we put on in public. Marc Stewart’s terrific original music and James Proudfoot’s lighting mirror the energy and virtuosity of the performers.

If you’ve already figured out how to do everything in your life right all the time, then you can give this show a miss. If not, you’ll take comfort and inspiration from How to Be.