Liz Roche wants Rex Levitates' new piece to bridge the divide between the performers and the audience. Michael Seaver reports

The most creative minds are by nature inquisitive. When you talk with Liz Roche it is as if she is in a constant state of discovery, and in the theatre her ever- shifting choreography always reflects the consideration, self-examination and, well, curiosity that is bestowed on every dancer's movement.

With Bread And Circus, which opens tomorrow at Project arts centre in Dublin, she claims this self-examination has most recently shaken off a long-standing and, to the rest of us, unnoticed hang-up about the performer-audience divide.

It's a confession that was revealed when she was working with the English choreographer Rosemary Butcher during International Dance Festival Ireland last year.

Surrounded by the audience, she performed a newly created solo that forced her to confront spectators at close quarters.

"I realised in doing that solo that we're all in this together. It's not an us-and-them. The audience are there to participate along with the performers. I think my hang-up probably comes from when I was young, performing with Dublin City Ballet, where there was a real, almost old-fashioned sense of theatre.

"There were rules you had to keep, like don't leave the theatre in make-up. It's only now that I realise how strongly embedded that was and how I needed to break it."

The admission will surprise those who have followed her choreography, which is never ostracising and is constantly grounded by an underlying humanity that portrays dancers as people rather than as instruments for her to manipulate.

Three weeks of research in January helped channel this new freedom into the creation of a piece. "I wanted to work with the idea of pushing the dancers to their physical limit. What happens if you put the dancers into a situation that they need to be highly concentrated and highly focused for or they'll get hurt?

"I was also interested in the spectacle of the Roman arena, where the fighters were mainly slaves, but they took an oath and agreed to be bound, beaten or burnt. Because they were slaves this freed them to make a choice, a choice to die nobly.

"This was only an illusionary choice, just as the crowd, who had the power to choose whether these people lived or died, had an illusion of power."

Working with the dancers and with Gavin Quinn, the theatre director, as dramaturge, the notion emerged of reach exceeding grasp, as well as what she describes as "the fine line between what's a performance and what's a blood sport".

The decision to work with a dramaturge for the first time reflects the radical new direction she was felt she was taking. "My concern was that this was a show that I wouldn't make that often. It's not going to be a new trend for me, so I felt that if I was going to push people physically, then it would be good to have another set of eyes.

"Working with a dramaturge is common practice in a lot of places, although it's still rare in Ireland. Since in this piece I wanted to look at characterisation and the dancers expending lots of energy, forced towards issues of survival, I became focused on the idea of the emotion that then emerges.

"I wanted to have Gavin there because he would deal with emotion - that's what a director does - and I wanted him to ask me questions that I wouldn't ask myself. For example, I would look at the dancers and see lines of movement, whereas Gavin would see more of an emotional line running through things.

"That's something that I'd really like to learn more about, the ability to switch my brain at that very moment and be able to see as a director rather than a choreographer."

Changing the lens through which her work is viewed is important to her. This year her company, Rex Levitates, received revenue funding from the Arts Council and so set up new demands and expectations on her as artistic director. Part of the challenge is in reconciling her development as a choreographer with the development of the company. But the temptation to be straitjacketed by the company structure will be hard fought.

"I do have a greasepaint side to me, but I also would like to keep a balance. I'm looking forward to Bread And Circus and the theatricality, lighting effects and set, but later in the year we will be working in a much more informal way."

Their Thoughts Are Thinking Them, which was performed at Éigse in Carlow at the weekend, is typical of this informality. Staged in a gallery space with neither lights nor set and with a basic sound system, it confronts the audience with pure movement that speaks with immediacy and downright honesty. Yet this is no coy attempt to simulate a shoestring aesthetic.

"I think my choreography can be more effective when I try not to create an illusion for people. The audience feel more involved but also I feel, in turn, that I learn more as a choreographer."

Although she has created dances for almost a decade, she has done much of it quietly. A former associate choreographer at CoisCéim Dance Theatre, she has choreographed productions for Opera Ireland for a number of years, as well as for Dance Theatre of Ireland and Scottish Dance Theatre. Her awards include the Peter Darrell Choreographic Award (2002), the Bonnie Bird UK New Choreography Award (2001) and the Jayne Snow Award at last year's Dublin Fringe Festival.

Since she formed Rex Levitates with her sister Jenny in 1999, the company has been a regular feature of the Dublin Fringe Festival and has had residencies at the Institute for Choreography and Dance and with North Tipperary County Council.

"I certainly don't have any sense of emerging as a choreographer. I think that with Rex Levitates we have been really conscious to try and develop a sense of energy with the dancers, so that they feel that they are part of something that is uniquely 'Rex'. And I think we have had to be quiet to do that. We ended up a lot of the time rehearsing down the country in small halls with one or two people.

"Through this time I was really trying to define who I was and maybe look at things that weren't so popular. But I needed to look at them, and even though that seemed to be a lot of hard work at the time, I am now clearer as to who I am and what my choreography is."

Even looking at a studio run-through of Bread And Circus without Morleigh Steinberg's lighting and with only scraps of Denis Roche's music, there is a palpable sense of self-knowing within the piece. "I certainly feel that I have engaged with it at a much deeper emotional level and for a much longer time than any previous work.

"Whereas before I felt like I could make a lot of pieces in a short space of time, now I feel that I can quieten down. There doesn't need to be such massive output but, instead, a much deeper look at single issues."

• Bread And Circus previews at Project, Dublin, at 8 p.m. today. It runs from tomorrow until Saturday with matinees at 1 p.m. on Thursday and 3 p.m. on Saturday