WHY did the Australian Dance Theatre choose the letter G as the title for the dance work we’ll be seeing soon?

Could it stand for Garry, the audacious choreographer? Or is it short for “Giselle”? After all, Garry Stewart, who cheekily reworked “Swan Lake” into “Birdbrain”, is known to have had the ghostly 19th century ballet in mind when he created the work.

Violently athletic, yet dreamlike in a sinister way, with costumes in green that owe something to the tutu and something to contemporary dance, the new ballet conjures up a netherworld of unreality or perhaps the afterlife, a key motif in “Giselle”.

Using 11 of his dancers from the Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide, Stewart explores themes of hysteria, desire, gender and death – all in 60 minutes.

The entire production is underscored by insistent electronic percussive sounds composed by Luke Smiles, whose electrifying physical performances were seen in the earliest days of Gideon Obarzanek’s Chunky Move company and who always seemed to be out there on the edge.

I chat to him in between rehearsals for a Sydney production of Jean Genet’s “The Maids”, starring Cate Blanchett. Smiles is the sound designer this time, but performance is never far from his mind.

“My formal training was in dance,” he tells “CityNews”, “but until I was a professional, I couldn’t afford to buy the apparatus, the computers, to create music.”

After three years he’d got enough equipment and now, for 15 years, has worn twin hats as dancer and composer.

Isn’t that unusual?

“Totally,” he replies, “normally the music production is quite separate from the dance and there are many composers who never even come to rehearsals.”

“Choreographers feel comfortable with me because I’m a dancer,” Smiles says.

Serendipitously, in 2007 when Stewart came up with the idea of creating “G”, Smiles happened to be around, so got a dancing role in the show and the job of composing.

“My process is different,” he says, “I find it best to be in rehearsal for the whole time.”

It started with Stewart talking about hysteria in connection with the Giselle motif.

“I asked, what sounds, or tones and scales combine to represent the state of hysteria?” he said.

“After a while I started to get an understanding… choreography and composition were kind of the same – we were doing it together.”

The music that Smiles has created for G is largely electronic, although there is a “very slight” reference to the classical “Giselle” music.

“The music,” Smiles says, “is the engine driver to the piece”.

“G”, Canberra Theatre, June 13-14, bookings to 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au