It might seem easy to create a dance piece about physical exhaustion: just work the dancers until they drop, right? But what Danish choreographer Andreas Constantinou achieves, in this companion piece to 2021’s Champions (which was about mental resilience), is to take his theme, pick it apart and explore it in a way that has academic clarity while also forcing the dancers to live and breathe it.

The five performers in Mass Effect start off rather jovially, bouncing on the balls of their feet, in sports gear, like a football team warming up. They maintain a steady rhythm as they jog through drills. Round one comes to an end and they pause, then start up again. This time there’s counting to help them focus. In rounds three and four their formations make way for wilder, looser movements. The more exhausted they become the more they seem to need to let a force beyond their control take over. 

They fling their arms and loll their necks. The pulse of the dance continues. Clothes come off. All this is still without music, with only the grunts and vocalisations of the dancers to buoy themselves along. But then comes the point at which they need something more. This is where local dancers (and you can become one too, we are told at the end) join the troupe onstage, willing them to keep going, as floor-shaking beats kick in and something between a rave and religious mania emerges. The progression is incredible to watch: the way the dancers relinquish themselves and allow their bodies to be carried along by the pulse. It has a playful feel of an experiment, but the raw euphoria of this group as they push themselves beyond their limits is viscerally, authentically real. 

Mass Effect, Summerhall, until 26 August, 12.55pm.