When we call an experience “weird,” we often mean it makes us uncomfortable. The dances of the Japanese polymath Saburo Teshigawara are definitely weird—the dancers’ arms seem to bend the wrong way, the body is in a constant whirl, and afterwards it is hard to remember a single step. But they leave you in a blissful daze. They are as translucent as a dragonfly wing and as penetrating as sunlight. “I want to perceive things from as many angles as possible,” the 70-year-old Tokyo native has said. He designs his own sets, costumes, sound, and lighting to help in this total vision. “The human body, for me, is something which lacks value in and of itself, but which can create meaning based on its use.” The one constant is ephemerality. Voice of Desert, a Montpellier Danse commission and world premiere, includes the choreographer in its four-person cast. —Apollinaire Scherr