Ann Arbor is a place people come to work on their expertise - to hone their craft among receptive people and institutions, whether that craft be electrical engineering or, as for choreographer and Dance Prof. Peter Sparling, dance.

Many institutions that offer entertainment in Ann Arbor fight for preference among an educated community. "I complain a bit about it but I'm also thrilled at the richness," said Sparling, who is the founder and artistic director of his own Ann Arbor-based company, the Peter Sparling Dance Company.

It was in part this richness that brought Sparling to Ann Arbor from New York more than 20 years ago. "I'd reached a point where I needed space and resources. I'd gotten weary of leading the 'hand-to-mouth' life of an artist," Sparling said.

Now, Sparling collaborates with other professionals on inventive pieces that span mediums. Sparling's company of half a dozen dancers performs at the not-for-profit Rudolf Arnheim Studio Theater of Dance Gallery Studio on Main Street. His company's Home Season, which begins tonight at 8 p.m., will include text by author Charles Baxter, a contemporary author and former University professor, narrated over a duet, music composed by Ann Arborite Frank Pahl, and lighting by the University's lighting department head, Rob Murphy.

The collaboration that marks this season's works speaks to the fluidity and relevance of dance. It's an expressive form that too often, and unreasonably, remains in the realm of aficionados. Sparling, who was himself a professional dancer for more than 30 years in the Jose Limon and Martha Graham dance companies, companies that defined early modern dance, offered an explanation of the prevalent attitude toward dance as a rarefied form.

"I think American culture has some strange inhibition about the human body and movement," he said. And dance in performance (rather than social dancing) was first kind of a European import, and maybe the last art form to get a foothold in America."

Antidotes to this perception can be found in dance that incorporates what Sparling called "idiosyncratic gesture," or motions from daily life that tell a story. "The System," a duet in tonight's performance, is built on these.

Sparling didn't need jargon to describe how his choreography feels: "I work from the inside out, from the core of the body - torquing, spiraling, using the idea that the body can wind around itself, then release like a spring," he said.

He admitted how strongly he was influenced by the movement styles of Graham and Limon. He is a regisseur of the Martha Graham Trust, which has been embroiled in controversy over the rights to stage the deceased artist's works. Sparling is one of the privileged few who hold those rights.

The Gallery Studio's performance space, carved out of a converted ballbearing factory, allows audiences an intimate closeness to the performers.

"There is so much on campus that often people forget about the local, the grassroots production companies," Sparling said. This weekend, with spring officially here, see what kind of growth comes from expert roots.

Peter Sparling Dance Company

Tonight, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m.

$10-$15

At Rudolf Arnheim Studio
Theater of Dance
Gallery Studio