It’s a brief show, running just 50 minutes, and just for this weekend (through September 25; tickets: $12), but I have a feeling that anyone who sees Swimming the List, from the Susie Lee Ensemble, will be mulling it over for a long while. Prosaic daily demands give way to a  sensual, sublime illustration of a dancer’s luminescent life, carved out at great cost–and the cry for payment presses more and more strongly.

The work features a solo dancer, the choreographer Ying Zhou, but as with Paul Budraitis’s recent salesman exhumation, there’s a cavalcade of creative collaborators who act as true partners to the dance.

In this case, that’s composer (and vocalist) Emily Greenleaf and pianist Jerrod Wendland, and the mingled talents of digital artist Keeara Rhoades, software designer Andy “Maybe you’ve heard of Microsoft Surface?” Wilson, and lighting designer Mandi Wood.

Lee’s group has a self-possession that packs houses, and this was no exception. Zhou begins the evening by, essentially, telling you what she’s going to tell you: reciting the list of chores, duties, and delights that is her day, before then dancing her day for you, in the company of a live, animated beam (Keeara Rhoades’ work) that dribbles across the floor like sand painting, ropes Zhou in bonds of light, and puddles in the palm of Zhou’s hand, as she pours it from one to the other.

There’s great variety in Zhou’s choreography, from swimming and martial arts and chair-constrained motions, to an abstraction of (I think) of chopsticks-to-hungry-mouth and even tango. She shows you how pain separates you from that part of your body, she pushes a swing (dutifully, desultorily, with amusement), she sparkles dancing by herself in the studio.

Equally, the light traces out the path of a day; forms a ticking clock on the wall; flows across Zhou, shoulder to shoulder; shimmers like a firefly. It’s probably useless for me to attempt to tell you how the live response of the light to Zhou’s movements leave you open-mouthed in wonder. (The reverse, as smoky wraith-lines encircle Zhou as she sits and dark thoughts come, has visceral impact as well.)

Gradually it becomes clear that there’s not enough time in the day, and not enough days in time. Near the end, Zhou tells you that she’s 36, she has two kids. Nothing makes her happier than dancing…but how can she? None of us have the answer to that, so far as I know, but all of a sudden everything you’ve seen, the result of so many stolen moments, gathers in weight, as if you’ve just discovered the shiny metal gleaming there pulls downward like gold.