This story first appeared at the Capitol Hill Seattle blog, because Justin is always pestering MvB for Capitol Hill arts stories.

Last week I pulled up a chair in the Kawasaki studio at Velocity Dance Center, where choreographer Catherine Cabeen, dancer Sarah Lustbader, and musician/ composer Kane Mathis were busy rehearsing their parts for Cabeen’s 2012 “Hyphen” dance program (March 22-24 at VDC, tickets: $20).

This is going to be different kind of program than her previous multimedia spectacle “Into the Void” at Queen Anne’s On the Boards, Cabeen informed me. In Velocity’s more intimate space, it’s all about the dance and the dancers, offering a more visceral communion with the works: expect music and heaving breaths with sprayed sweat, at least in the front row.

The relationship of music and dance is a theme of the evening, of sorts, as Cabeen explained that one of the three world premieres that Catherine Cabine & Co. is presenting, “On the Way Out,” is choreographed site specifically: Mathis performs on the kora, but he’s “out of the pit” (as Cabeen puts it), situated up front while Lustbader’s dancing is seen only through doorways at the end of room.

“Everyone has a partial-view seat” for this one, said Cabeen. “We think we see the ‘whole’ dancer, usually, but we don’t. This piece makes that explicit.”

When I was settled at the recent rehearsal, Cabeen and the fiendishly talented Mathis, playing the oud, started with “5 Windows,” which Cabeen calls a duet, and exploration of “Ottoman musical structures in a contemporary visual and sonic context.” (As you can see from the photo, Cabeen’s extensions are remarkable.) Some of what is interesting to Cabeen, as a choreographer–the novelty of working with 10-beat music–may slip by the casual viewer. I can’t count beats to save my life, I always lose my place, but I do savor that rigorous, yet labile Graham technique.

The two together, Cabeen and Mathis, come to form a sort of split-screen view of music and dance, or, more figuratively perhaps, of a musician’s soul, in an out-of-body experience, made visible–the interplay between attending to, and immersion in.

“My biggest fear,” said Cabeen to Mathis, “Is that when I go to put my foot on your knee, I’m going to kick it.” There was also a question of where Mathis’s toes should be, prompting a call for a toe understudy.

Because of the oud, my mind kept suggesting Eastern associations — was that a hint of something in the hip flex? — but chatting with Cabeen after, I learned she had consciously avoided trying to incorporate region-specific dance elements, (not wanting to be the latest white girl to appropriate the exotic, I suppose). Instead, she wanted to evoke the music’s “sacred geometry” in space, with spirals, crossings, figure-eights.

Another new work, Gravitas, set on Karena Birk, features “11 minutes of jumping,” as a fulfillment of Birk’s request for some elevation, and a response to the notion that contemporary dance is stuck in earthly clay. Cabeen took inspiration from the red-faced exertions of trumpet players, and said, smiling slightly evilly, said that Birk gets to a point where she’s “just trying to survive the choreography.” Trumpeter Brian Chin has it equally rough.

“All of the Above” is a quartet for four female dancers, Birk, Brenna Monroe-Cook, Ella Mahler, and Lustbader, to new music by composer Nat Evans. “I have no interest in the linguistic conversation,” admitted Cabeen, about the discussion over the correct label for new dance (modern, contemporary, post-modern?). She quoted Bill T. Jones, for whom she danced for over a decade, saying, “The answer is in the doing.” Here she tries to unite the “heavy” and the “whimsical,” asking questions about parts and wholes, and concluding, as the title implies, that it doesn’t make sense to slice dance too finely. “Composites,” with music by Julian Martlew and text by Jay McAleer, is the encore on the program, having had its premiere in 2010.

For a glimpse of what Cabeen’s choreography looks like in motion, try this sampler on YouTube:

Velocity Dance Center is located at 1621 12th Ave. You can learn more at velocitydancecenter.org.