Picture a four-ingredient cake, a quatre-quarts. It’s a guaranteed recipe for a pure and simple confection. For 4quART, produced by Danse-Cité and the 2e Porte à Gauche collective, four dancers – Sophie Corriveau, Manuel Rocque, Peter Trosztmer and Lucie Vigneault – cooked up a show with four choreographers – Marie Béland, Alain Francoeur, Frédérick Gravel and Catherine Tardif – that’s crunchy (peanuts are core symbols), rough at the edges and dive-in delicious in spots. Philippe Brault provides tasty guitar licks and an engaging score for the evening.

Leading up to the show, as performers worked with the sensibilities of the dancemakers, all the information was filtered into a hearty full-course buffet. No one signature is evident, and the terrifically focused dancers communicate their considerable energies and commitment to the tasks at hand.

Lighter moments are interspersed with more intense, combative physicality. A "ding" indicates a shift in the action. Multimedia, designed by LEMM, is integrated seamlessly; dancers with handheld cameras capture the goings-on with images projected onto monitors and large moveable screens creating some fascinating superimpositions.

The 2e Porte gang emerged by engaging the public actively, and this time is no exception. From beginning to end, the fourth wall is broken, with the audience integrated into the performance. People are first captured on video, then encouraged to circulate and view the action up-close with the performers at one point brushing up alongside spectators. But beware, at nearly an hour-and-a-half, it’s just too long, especially with no seating provided.

4quART

At Monument-National (1182 St-Laurent) through April 2