NEW YORK -- An hour before the curtain rises, the choreographer stands alone on stage, nervously gazing at the rows of empty seats.

Heidi Latsky is about to unveil the boldest, most important performance of her life.

And she is tortured by questions and doubts.

Will audiences understand her vision and that of the unique performers they are about to see? Or will they find it too shocking, too disconcerting, too weird?

What will they think of the beautiful young woman with the porcelain skin, whose exposed shoulder-blade quivers in a solo that spotlights her missing left arm, or the raw athleticism of another performer whose shortened, twisted arm is groped by her able-bodied suitor in a frenzied, erotic courtship that consumes center stage?

Will they applaud or recoil? Will they even show up?

All her life, the Canadian-born Latsky has been drawn to bodies and forms. She sees the way someone moves, the shape of limbs, long before she notices personality.

Best known as a choreographer and one-time principal dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane company, she has a restless energy that makes her seem younger than 51, and her skill and stage presence have won national acclaim. But until 2006, when she received an unusual commission to compose a piece for a young woman with no fingers and no lower legs, Latsky had never worked with disabled performers.

What began as a huge leap of faith gradually evolved into a performance and, finally, into a troupe.

And a name: GIMP, Latsky says, ``is about shattering perceptions, about provoking people to think, really think, about body image and beauty and disability and dance.''

But over the past two years, GIMP has evolved into a movement, a mission almost, a way of getting the world to look at itself a bit differently.

And it has become the story of an unlikely cast of characters drawn together by the choreographer who became their leader almost by accident.

Her first recruit was a lanky, grinning 40-year-old, with long, stiff legs and a lurching gait.

Lawrence Carter-Long had never considered his atrophied legs to be anything but a frustrating, often painful distraction from the high-energy pursuits of his life. Born with cerebral palsy, he was a poster boy for the United Fund. As an adult, he has served as an eloquent advocate for the Disabilities Network of New York City.

And then, at a performance in 2007, Carter-Long met a tiny woman who believes in big dreams, who saw a face that reminded her of Nureyev's and a gait that was, in its way, as extraordinary as the famed dancer's leaps.

''I think your gait is beautiful,'' Latsky told a stunned Carter-Long. ``I want to create a dance around the way you walk.''

GRUELING REHEARSALS

The early rehearsals were grueling. Carter-Long's limbs ached. His feet bled. He fell constantly. But his confidence and strength grew. And over time, his body changed -- as did his gait.

Jeffrey Freeze, a principal dancer in Latsky's company, could see it too. Carter-Long was tapping into the kind of raw emotional honesty that Latsky had long urged Freeze to strive for.

At 39, Freeze is a technically brilliant dancer whose feet seem to fly across the stage and whose good-natured exhibitionism fills rehearsals with humor.

The native Tennessean has danced all over the world, on Broadway, in movies. But when Freeze began jauntily trotting beside Carter-Long in rehearsal one day, his dancing life changed forever.

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