But for its latest show, QL2 Dance has used Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a vehicle for three choreographers to create a work commenting on the state of the ocean and what can be done about it.

QL2 Dance's artistic director Ruth Osborne said they wanted a literary work to develop into a dance piece for the Canberra youth dance ensemble.

Dramaturg Pip Buining suggested the Coleridge work, about a mariner who kills an albatross that has saved his ship and undergoes a terrible ordeal, which was published during the Industrial Revolution.

"They had the same problems we have now, about how we ignore the environment ...We've called this This Poisoned Sea,"

It has sections choreographed in collaboration with the dancers by Osborne, West Australian choreographer Claudia Alessi, Jack Ziesing, formerly of Expressions Dance Company, and QL2 Dance alumna Eliza Sanders, now based in New Zealand.

Alessi had previously worked with QL2 Dance as a director of the Australian Youth Dance Festival in 2009 but was choreographing work with it for the first time. She said her section, My own private albatross, dealt with the massive amounts of waste from the consumer society that get deposited into the oceans and the huge effects this had given the oceans make up the majority of the planet.

"The question being, how do we reverse this - in relating it the poem, how do we stop shooting the albatross?"

She said we need to "give a healthy planet and a healthy environment to our youth and live sustainably on it in a healthy way".

Sanders had danced with QL2 Dance in 2009-11, an experience she described as "really wonderful" with its opportunities to work with professional choreographers, and was returning to it to choreograph for the first time. Her section, The poem is within us, is about "how the themes can be treated in modern life - all of us have personal albatrosses we face, burdens and struggles and challenges."

Jessica Nicholls, 16, of Evatt, said she had been dancing with QL2 Dance for four and a half years and wanted to apply to the Victorian College of the Arts for further dance study. She said the ensemble had begun work on This Poisoned Sea in January with Ziesing's section, A hellish thing, and had taken it to Melbourne in March as part of the Australian Youth Dance Festival.

"It went really well - it was great to meet with other dancers."

This Poisoned Sea is on at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre until Saturday, July 29 at 7pm with a 2pm performance on Saturday. Tickets $20-$32. Bookings: canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 62752700.