Rosie Herrera, choreographer. Photo from www.mprnews.com

OK, GroundWorks dance fans: the company is coming back to Akron, and once again to the theater in Akron-Summit County Public Library. GroundWorks DanceTheater, a Knight Arts grantee, is bringing what promises to be a far different dance from what audience members are used to seeing from this stellar troupe.

For this dance concert, GroundWorks commissioned choreographer Rosie Herrera (an award-winning dance maker) to create something for the company. Herrara, who leads her own company, Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, itself a Knight Arts grantee out of Miami, created a work titled “House Broken.”

You probably can already picture from the title some of the implications in her work – dysfunctional family, sexual tensions and politics within the family unit, and the like.

Yet, at a rehearsal of the company working out some of the finer points of the piece, it is clear Herrera takes what seems to be a lighthearted view of some pretty strong issues.

The songs for the nine-section work give clearly ironic insight into American culture – particularly with a 1950s repressed twist to it. One section is called “Little Boxes” (with folk singer Burl Ives in the background); others are “It’s Not Unusual” and “She’s a Lady” (with veteran pop start Tom Jones holding forth).

Herrera’s sets are equally daunting to behold, and no doubt something most dancers never have to contend with – like a treadmill with a male dancer changing diapers, shopping and doing a host of household chores while the machine seemingly speeds up. There’s also a section to the song “Sad Young Man” with the plaintiff voice of Roberta Flack in the background, as a solo male dancer dances with an empty box that looks like him. That’s lots of symbolism to work through in a dance section – but it was mesmerizing to watch as the rehearsal bore out.

The big finish has to do with the female dancers dressed like blades of grass while a lawn mower is being danced around the stage. Herrera said she deliberately wanted the women dancers to have long because of this idea of being mowed down in an imbalanced world.

From watching rehearsal, one can only anticipate Herrera’s “House Broken” and see how it all has come together.

Herrera is inventive, sensitive and has a wry sense of humor. All those elements will no doubt show in her creative work for GroundWorks.

Also on the bill for the evening will be a piece by David Shimotakahara, director of GroundWorks. It’ll be his “LUNA,” a piece that shows Shimotakahara’s continuing concern with the notion of space and boundaries in dance terms. In this work, which the company has performed before, the choreographer this time took away the usual entrances and exits from the wings by focusing a light down on the stage to form a circle (like the “luna” or moon of the title), into which the dancers enter and exit as if at random. The dancers perform, as Shimotakahara noted in an interview, in “a circle of light” — a notion that gets not only at the title but the emotional edges of the 16-minute piece as well.

Amy Miller, choreographer. Photo from www.cleveland.com

The final piece on the program will be co-artistic director Amy Miller’s “For the Life of Me.” It’s a work for five dancers “and a smile” as the company says. The work touches on what is part of Miller’s flip and hip style at times.

GroundWorks DanceTheater will perform one night only at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 29 in the theater at Akron-Summit County Public Library, 60 S. High St., Akron; 216-751-0088; www.groundworksdance.org. Tickets are $25 ($10 for students).