CONTEMPORARY dance has never been a particular passion of mine. Occasional bit of funk on a Friday night? Definitely. Disco? I’m all for it.

The last contemporary dance performance I went to must have been more than 15-years-ago in a converted factory in Luton. And the only thing I can really remember about that was eating my first proper curry before the event.

So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was ushered into what looked like a huge crime scene investigation forensics tent in the pitch black theatre at Swindon Dance, based in the old town hall.

PuzzleCreature, by company Neon Dance, described itself as a performance inspired by the “death-eluding architecture designs” of husband-and-wife pair Madeline Gins and Shusaku Arakawa.

The pair founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation in late 1980s New York to promote their central philosophy that death is not inevitable. In architecture, this philosophy led them to design garishly colourful houses designed to stimulate the senses.

Arakawa died in 2010, Gins in 2014. However, their ideas are the driving force behind Neon Dance’s latest show, which has already toured Arakawa’s native Japan.

The first half is played out inside a clear plastic dome, inflated to about three metres high. Audience members are sat in the dome together with the show’s three young dancers and a dozen or so body parts, made out of white gauze and suspended from the ceiling of the inflatable dome.

Sign language is incorporated into the performance and the bodies of the dancers entwine and scuttle across the plastic sheeting like insects.

It’s engrossing. But it’s the second half when things start to hot up.

In the middle of the stage the plastic tent has been partially inflated. It looks like a giant see-through cushion.

The dancers, Luke Crook, Natalie Divall and Chihiro Kawasaki, jump and push at it. Suddenly, the see-through cushion is turned into a wave – billowing towards the audience. Eventually, the music begins to calm. One of the dancers crawls beneath the cushion, tucking her knees into her chest.

The lights come up. Choreographer Adrienne Hart accepts her applause and the audience traipses back to the foyer.

Has PuzzleCreature convinced me death is not inevitable? No, the punchy red wine at the interval did that.

But it’s certainly changed my view of contemporary dance.