BEIRUT: Europe in the Dark Ages was afflicted by a condition that has come to be known as “dance mania.”

From around the 10th century until its abrupt end in the 1600s, the continent witnessed regular outbreaks of frenzied mass dancing.Groups of men, women and children would writhe and twirl uncontrollably for hours, days or weeks until they collapsed with exhaustion or utter ecstasy.

Historians are divided over the causes of dance mania. Some have drawn comparisons with a form of motion seen in sufferers of chorea, a neurological disorder characterized by irregular contractions that appear to flow from one muscle to the next.

Some historians believe that dance mania didn’t really die out, but re-materialized in rave culture – which sees E-fueled ravesters spasmodically jerk their bodies about for hour upon hour, often reaching a kind of transported state.

Some of these themes emerged in “Out of Context,” from Belgian company Les Ballets C de la B. Inspired by chorea, “Out of Context” played at Masrah al-Madina Friday as part of the Beirut International Platform of Dance (BIPOD), courtesy of the Goethe Institute and Beiteddine Festival.

Les Ballets C de la B founder Alain Platel worked with children suffering from motor disabilities before he turned to contemporary dance in the 1980s. A number of his past works have brought the spasms, tics and contortions of impairment to the stage, including 2008’s “pitie!” and 2006’s “vsprs.”

Dedicated to Platel’s friend and mentor Pina Bausch, who died in 2009, “Out of Context” marks a departure for the company.

Past productions have deployed complicated multi-leveled sets and operatic soundtracks. “Out of Context” springs out of nothing more than a pair of microphones and a stack of orange blankets.

As the lights went up on this bare backdrop, audience members stood one by one and strode onto the stage. Actually, they were dancers, planted in the auditorium, but it was a nice touch.

Standing at the rear of the stage with their backs to the audience, the nine performers methodically removed every scrap of clothing aside from the skimpiest of undergarments.

Wrapping themselves in orange blankets, they dispersed across the space, as if dispossessed.

Platel is the enfant terrible of dance, seemingly enjoying censure far more than acclaim. In his 2006 documentary about the company, “Les Ballets De-Ci De-La,” Platel gleefully included a selection of vox pops with disgusted audience members after a Paris Opera performance of “Wolf” – which had a pack of dogs running around onstage.

There were no such high jinks in “Out of Context,” but Platel nonetheless tested his audience’s patience with an opening section that was painfully slow and, at times, painful to watch.

Beginning with small twitching movements, the dancers warmed up with animal impressions, rubbing noses and tentatively nuzzling. Scraping his stubble against a microphone, one performer created blasts of interference.

Then, the chorea impressions began. Platel’s top-flight team of dancers had obviously done their homework, enacting convincing simulations of motor disorder. Eyes lolling, limbs twitching, bodies contorted and mouths leering, the performers twisted and writhed across the stage.

It’s an intriguing idea to transpose the movements of a motor disorder such as chorea – epitomizing a lack of control – into a performance where dancers frequently moved in synch – the epitome of control. Still, these passages weren’t easy to watch. Dancer Romeu Runa’s soundscape exacerbated the general discomfort.

Stalking across the stage on extreme tip-toe, his back wildly arched and head drooping, Runa screeched and wailed into a microphone that added an unearthly electronic echo to his voice. Runa periodically dropped the microphone to the floor, creating reverb-laden thudding sounds.

Around halfway through, a pulsing electronic beat heralded some relief. Arrayed in mutable formations, the dancers explored the varied species of movement that populate dance floors of contemporary nightspots.

Body popping, break dancing, two-stepping, moon-walking, bumping and grinding, the troupe turned an eye to the hyper-sexualized visual vocabulary of the disco, with frequently hilarious results.

Rosalba Torres Guerro displayed a particular gift for physical comedy, simulating an uncomfortable lout on the pull or a hyperactive disco bunny with pinpoint accuracy.

Perhaps suggesting that the spasms and jerks of the dance floor are close relatives of the contractions of chorea, Platel’s dancers allowed themselves to camp it up.

“Out of Context” took on the atmosphere of a Chippendales concert when Ross McCormack clambered in among the audience, giving a sweaty lap dance to one lucky lady.

As their colleagues gyrated like go-go dancers or wildly thrust their hips about, other dancers took it in turn to step up to the microphone to sing snatches of dance floor classics.

“That’s the way, ah-ha ah-ha, I like it!”

“It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes!”

“All the single ladies!”

Energetic and tightly choreographed, this segment almost brought the audience to their feet.

Soon, however, the company returned to more tortuous movements. Kaori Ito enacted a sequence of particularly impressive contortions, folding her body into every limb arrangement you could possibly imagine.

Back in their orange blankets, the dancers stared balefully at the audience as a Jimmy Scott cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” blasted from the speakers.

Standing at the front of the stage, Runa asked, “Who wants to dance with me?”

Despite multiple takers, the corps re-attired and retuned from whence they came. It felt a bit of a cop-out. This didn’t stop the audience from going wild. Not a bottom remained on its seat as attendees demanded the performers take their curtain call again and again.

Uneven and protracted, “Out of Context” is nonetheless curiously moving. Exploring the varieties of physical abandon, Platel’s production conveys a sense of the wild relief experienced by long-dead victims of dance mania.

Giving themselves up to movement in an attempt to reach an unspecified goal, Les Ballets C de la B appeal to a primal urge that is, perhaps, a deep-rooted element of the human condition.

BIPOD continues later this month. The Arab Dance Platform begins April 20 with the Iraqi Bodies production “The Sleepers” at Theater Monnot. For further details, visit www.maqamat.org/bipod2011 or call 961 1 343 834.