Sometimes it’s nice to see your surroundings through new eyes. Last Friday at Inkub8, I had the pleasure of sitting next to a Miami native who has been away from home for a while. When I met Krista Miranda last summer in Zagreb, Croatia at the Performance Studies International conference, she asked me if there was much of a contemporary dance scene in Miami.

Heather Maloney’s Vertical Sprawl is the best answer I could give her. After the show, I was delighted to rediscover in Miranda’s reaction aspects of Maloney’s work I’ve come to take for granted.

Our guest marveled at Maloney’s movement vocabulary; the spiraling limbs that close in on themselves, then shoot into space; the stillness alternating with sudden bursts of activity. She was amazed by the dancers’ strength, and the unusual way Maloney calls on that strength in her partnering. Maloney, Joanne Barrett, Carlota Pradera, and John Beauregard took turns stroking each other on the floor and lifting each other overhead. The sequences between Pradera and Beauregard were particularly remarkable, as the duo traded places in Beauregard’s wheelchair and the male dancer made such powerful use of his arms and torso to push his partner and propel the lower part of his body that is was often hard to remember that he is paraplegic. Indeed, all of the dancers seemed to summon supernatural strength from their limbs.

Watching Maloney over the years, these marvels have developed little by little – a parallel development in a way to the sinister devolution of the planet on which her work comments. When changes are so gradual, it is sometimes easy to miss their power. But the consequences, for good or ill, will find you in the end.

Vertical Sprawl continues at 8:30pm on Friday, May 28 and Saturday, May 29 at Inkub8, 2021 NW 1st Place, Miami; Tickets cost $15; $5 for students; reserve seats at [email protected] or call 305-482-1621; www.inkub8.org.