To understand why MOTUS O dance theatre's productions look so very different than other companies', you just have to look at the unconventional backgrounds of its three artistic directors. Take James Croker: he grew up on an Australian sheep farm, and has done everything from professionally shearing sheep to studying engineering and sculpture. The biggest influence on his dance, though, might be his work in theatre and mime, and more specifically, his time as a street performer. He, and the other members of the company (whose experience spans figure skating and gymnastics), have all busked around Europe.

"We've taken that approach of communicating ideas in an unconventional way, with the street energy you need when you're a busker," Croker explains from the troupe's Stouffville, Ontario, headquarters, before heading out for a western Canadian tour that includes a show at North Vancouver's Centennial Theatre on Saturday night (October 18). "So we're quite concept- and narrative-driven. It's quite different from other choreographers, who usually take a technique and then impose a concept on it."

The result, for MOTUS O, is works that are lavish and multidimensional; visual feasts of wild costumes, props, video, and lighting. This is dance served up with the production values and character studies of theatre, as well as generous doses of humour. "We all worked as street clowns, and we know that if you can get people laughing, you can tell them anything," says Croker. "The humour opens people up, and makes them more receptive to the pathos in the work."

The piece MOTUS O will bring here, Variations in Love, comprises 13 vignettes about different forms of love, and it spans everything from the funny to the erotic. One episode, called "Torched", focuses on a woman being dumped-burnt-by a guy; another is a light, comedic look at guys ogling women on the beach. Elsewhere is an expressionistic ode to a real-life friend who drowned; the water, depicted through billowing, spotlit cascades of fabric, becomes the siren that seduces him. And another vignette follows a couple into old age, with the now elderly woman still enamoured of her husband's violin music. It's the multitalented Croker who plays the instrument on-stage.

"We often incorporate props as an integral part of the story; they're almost like a separate character," he explains.

Whatever MOTUS O is doing differently, it seems to be working. The company has been thriving since 1990, touring North America and the South Seas with 10 full-length pieces, including wildly visual Petrouchka and Midsummer Night's Dream. But how does such a strong, widely trained artistic team-which includes onetime gymnast, singer, and flutist Cindy Croker (James's wife) and former national figure skater Jack Langenhuizen-manage to meld minds on a single creation? It seems that, even in the creative process, MOTUS O is unique.

"We're writing whole productions," James Croker explains. "Many dance companies spend six months working on a five- or 10-minute dance work. We're writing and designing a one-and-a-half-hour show.

"Whoever has the vision for the work, the other two support them in the fruition of that vision," he continues. "And supporting them may be to criticize, because we all get stuck in these little ruts. But when the dust settles, we're all still there and we're committed to the process."