Italian choreographer Mauro Astolfi is bunched together in a mirrored room with several men and one woman, his body spewing out sinuous and complex steps, which they attempt to copy.

Astolfi and two other men lift up dancer Ellen Akashi, a member of Backhausdance, an Orange County company that presents new dance. He tells her to stand on his upper arm. She puts one foot after another on his bicep and she straightens, posing like a statue, until the three men flip her in slow motion, heels over head, so she rests horizontally a few feet off the floor.

Every move is being filmed to use as a digital cheat sheet, guiding the company’s dancers as they try to duplicate Astolfi’s idiosyncratic body language. Two assistants from his own dance company in Italy help the American dancers digest his flowing, highly filigreed style.

In the space of a few minutes, he moves through a bit of ballet, the rootedness of modern dance, the casualness of a walk in the park, a hint of martial arts and shades of hip-hop and street dance.

That’s but one scene from Astolfi’s distinctive dance-making process, the results of which premieres at two concerts this weekend at the Martha B. Knobel Dance Theater at CSULB.

Backhausdance will present Astolfi’s piece, “Quantum of Love,” as well as a new piece by Israeli choreographer Jhonathan Soutchy, and two works by the company’s artistic director Jennifer Backhaus.

Astolfi has made the 33-minute “Quantum of Love” in two six-day work weeks, a breakneck pace. The 56-year-old doesn’t discard or edit any of the phrases as he composes. At first, he wants the dancers to replicate each move, but eventually, he allows them—encourages them—to make adjustments so the work will look organic to each person.

“It’s super-strange,” says one dancer, as she tries walking sideways keeping her legs crossed, her body bent at the waist, her back flat and face turned toward an imaginary audience.

“Don’t think just about ‘super-strange.’ It’s super-different,” says Astolfi, who speaks fluent, lightly accented English. “Because in a few days, it will be normal.”

Astolfi has his own dance troupe in Rome, Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, which he named after hearing Paula Abdul’s song “Spellbound, using the English word because there was no exact equivalent in Italian. He acknowledges that his style is personal, and can be a challenge for others to master. He is always ever-experimenting with new ways to manipulate his own body; the gestures can look foreign from the art form’s centuries’ old norms.

Astolfi has multiple sources of inspiration, including music and the personalities of the men and women he’s working with. He wants the finished product to create an “atmosphere” as opposed to telling a story. On the other hand, he doesn’t believe that “abstraction exists in life.”

“I’m not telling a story that anybody can recognize,” he says. “But the dancers, when they are moving, they [transmit] millions of bits of information to the audience, if they really feel what they’re doing. They use movements to express hidden parts about themselves. That’s the most interesting thing to me.”

The first few days of rehearsal, he tried to get to know the 10 cast members by giving them what he called “nonsense” moves. By day two, he already had a sense of their personalities, based on how they reacted—emotionally and intellectually, as well as physically.

“For example, Zak, he was very methodical, very much like a monk, like he was centering himself all the time,” Astolfi says about Zak Ryan Schlegel, a tall, thin intense man with a beard. “I started creating a section for him from that impression I had of him.”

Jennifer Backhaus is an assistant professor of dance at Chapman University and has created more than 19 dances for the troupe she founded in 2003, which continues to grow in prestige. This past year, it debuted at the respected Joyce Theatre in Manhattan and had an inaugural European tour.

She has increased the number of guest choreographers to broaden the range of work the group presents. When asked what defines the Backhausdance aesthetic, she refers to the design and athleticism of the pieces, and their “humanness.”

“It’s not like ‘body beautiful dance’ that’s just all about lines and stuff, pirouettes and technique. There has to be, for me, a connection to being a person,” she says.

This upcoming season, co-director of contemporary ballet company Complexion, Dwight Rhoden will produce a work. And Backhausdance the company will present a new work by longtime company member Amanda White in February 2019 at the Orange County Museum of Art’s temporary gallery space.

Before co-founding Spellbound in 1994, Astolfi spent time in the United States, studying the techniques of modern dance pioneers Martha Graham and Paul Taylor. He performed with small experimental troupes, but that side of his career was waylaid by several catastrophic injuries. Once he had healed, he says, his priorities had shifted.

“Since that moment, I had the chance of being able to discover a lot of new [(dance]) languages. Before, I was more [interested in] power, jumping and doing a lot of big powerful things,” he says. “ Then, I started creating more shapes.”

Backhausdance performs Friday, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Nov. 3, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Martha B. Knobel Dance Theater, on the campus of Cal State Long Beach, 6200 Atherton, 90840. Tickets are $20-$60. For more information, visit backhausdance.org.