Choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen is pushy -- in a way artists should be.

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's artistic director believes in stretching the physical and emotional reservoirs of her dancers. She doesn't mind shoving audiences out of a collective comfort zone in her pursuit of art. And, she likes knocking down the barriers that divide dance from other art forms.

Her newest piece, "Interiors," does all of this, urging Ririe-Woodbury's dancers to their physical limits as it melds dance, video footage and throbbing rock music into a new, collaborative art form. Ririe-Woodbury gives the world premiere of "Interiors" this week as part of a program built entirely on works by Boye-Christensen.

"She's not creating merely dainty movement," said dancer Erin Lehua Brown of Boye-Christensen's choreography for "Interiors." "She wants to push, push, push us, and we have that same attitude. As dancers, we want to go beyond our capability. We have to be curious of our boundaries, and learn when we can step over them."

Not satisfied with a simple marriage of music and movement, Boye-Christensen seeks additional artistic layers. "Interiors" integrates video footage by Salt Lake City artist Trent Call, who says he takes his inspiration from "1930s animation, landscapes, traditional art, dirt on the street, graffiti, chaos and Western movies."

"I pull from everything -- all pop culture," Call said. Still, the idea of collaborating with dancers had never occurred to him until he was approached by Ririe-Woodbury.

"I do collaborate quite often with fellow visual artists," Call said. "But crossing the lines and collaborating with dancers is a whole new world. It's been good -- a learning experience, and definitely a new challenge."

Call describes his visual contribution as "fairly abstract, not too direct."

"Everything is something," he said. "If you look hard enough, you can easily tell what it is, or where it is coming from, but it comes across as texture and blurs."

The non-literal sense of Call's video footage adds ambience and texture to choreographic movement without overpowering it, Boye-Christensen said -- just as she hoped.

"Trent's work has a poetry that I was drawn to," she said. "That's what I always look for in other artist's work. There is a lot of subtext to his images, so many different layers . . . That, for me, is when a collaboration has been successful, when you add something to each other's work and the other person's work is highlighted through your own work."

Call's interest in graffiti and other art of urban landscapes reminds her of humankind's penchant for leaving visual markings -- an impulse even older than the ancient petroglyphs found in Utah's deserts.

Although rock art was Boye-Christensen's original point of departure, "Interiors" became an expression of her view of contemporary society, which she sees as "more explosive, aggressive and impersonal than perhaps was the case in previous times."

At a rehearsal last week, three men and three women moved against the driving beat of music by Nick Cave as theys explored issues of detachment and dependence, violence and tenderness. Bodies were stretched to near-impossible feats of balance and strength; emotions were taut.

"The dancers are pushed to a place of extreme tension and extreme release," Boye-Christensen said. "We go past where it isn't really comfortable anymore, getting to places that are perhaps painful -- not just on a physical level, but an emotional one. That's when it becomes poignant, and haunting to the viewer."

Like "Interiors," the other pieces on the program, all choreographed by Boye-Christensen, include inspiration from diverse sources, and strive to take dancers and watchers on emotional journeys.

"The Visit," (2002) is based on a painting by Mexican artist Remedios Varo, "Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst," as well as case studies by neurologist Oliver Sacks. "Bridge" (2005), uses the minimalist repetition of music by John Adams as foundation for a dance exploring ritual and ceremony.

Excerpts from "Chairs, Basically" (2007) uses the dance form of tango to explore human relationships without descending into sentimentalism and kitsch.

Boye-Christensen has a cosmopolitan background -- she's Danish, and has lived in London and New York. That, plus her interest in pushing artistic boundaries, positions her to make fresh contributions to Utah's cultural life, according to Brown.

"You won't see anything like this anywhere else around here," Brown said. "Charlotte's unique in Salt Lake City, and we're lucky to have her here. Her work needs to be seen, and felt."