The Sex Party-primed students who attended “Orpheus and Eurydice,” a dance performance by Compagnie Marie Chouinard last Friday and Saturday night at the CFA Theater, might most vividly remember the performers’ perfect bodies, golden pasties, and large phalluses. These images delivered immediate shock and elicited a distinct emotional response, but their ephemeral presence was eclipsed by the far more powerful experience of the work as a whole, which lingered afterwards like the hazy memory of an intense drug trip. Watching the show, I was in another world.

The piece opened on a bright white stage. A beautiful woman wearing only gold pasties and loose pants came on stage and appeared to ingest a golden bell. After a troupe of her companions (similarly clad save for the addition of arctic-style fur hats) paraded about in a manner reminiscent of tribal celebration, the work’s take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth began. Orpheus, who we are told was the first poet, descends into the Underworld to rescue his beloved wife, Eurydice, from Hades. Upon hearing Orpheus’s masterful music, Hades concedes to allow Eurydice to follow Orpheus to Earth’s surface, provided that Orpheus does not turn to look at Eurydice. But Orpheus loses faith, and when he turns around, Eurydice disappears forever. Angry women then chop off his head. As a dancer narrated the story with grossly contorted words, the other performers stood in a circle and acted out the tragic tale like little children in a school play: elevating and bending their arms, for example, to visualize Eurydice as goddess of the trees.

This feeling of frivolous joy permeated the work, despite the unrestrained sexual emphasis. At times, the male dancers strapped on erect phalluses and platform heels and paired up with the women, engaging in an inventive array of frantic sexual positions. The audience could hear the sound of their wild thumping even after the music stopped, conveying comedic enthusiasm rather than expected embarrassment. Facial expressions were key; stretched into insane grins for much of the performance, the dancers’ elastic faces morphed from bug-like to intensely vacant, with gaping mouths and wide eyes, during different segments of the show.

The choreography, costume design, lighting, and music composition fit together to create a particular atmosphere. The music, which flickered between fury, whimsy, and insane joy, incorporated the sounds of gunshots and the dancers’ own voices, melding with the permeating freshness of the other stage elements to transport me into the dancers’ world. When a blond dancer climbed into the audience, ranting in a strange language reminiscent of the Leeloo from “The Fifth Element,” I felt apart of her landscape, rather than separated by the stage-audience divide.

Audience reaction was mostly enthusiastic applause. While some were perhaps unnerved by the work’s unconventional elements, most students welcomed the concept of nearly bare, sexy dancers, interpreting the work as making statements about humanity and gender. A student, who wished to remain anonymous, commented that the dancers’ work seemed to strip away external classifications, getting at something almost elemental in nature.

“After a while, I stopped feeling like I was watching women and men,” HE?SHE?ZE SAI*D. “Instead, I just saw bodies.”