Teaching has long been the refuge of artists in need of a day job. For the past year, dance theater fans have missed the work of choreographer and dancer Octavio Campos while he has dedicated his prodigious energy to directing the arts program at the Coconut Grove charter high school, the Academy of Arts & Minds.

Campos is known for his challenging, at times inscrutable, yet always hilarious works such as Penguin Moon (about terrorism, we think) and Bug Chasers (about the ways people destroy their bodies in order to feel loved). So I was not sure what to expect when I trudged up the stairs to A&M;’s third floor Abanico Theatre for the high school’s spring dance ensemble concert, which featured a new work by Campos as the finale.

Most of the program was what you might expect from a good high school dance concert: lovely young bodies executing short ballet, Broadway, and contemporary pieces with more or less panicked faces, to more or less success. Then came Campos’ piece. True to the practice of dance theater, the choreographer drew from the concerns and gestures of his world, which right now is full of teenagers getting to know themselves and each other, and alternately terrified and ecstatic about that process of discovery.

Titled “Minus One,” Campos joked, because there was always one person missing from every rehearsal, the piece revolves around the numerological implications of the number five. An all-boy high school jazz quartet gamely played Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” while an all-girl foursome of dancers interrupted and inspired them, and at one point fed them Five Guys burgers. The burgers were a typical Campos touch: likely a precise, personal symbol, their meaning was left for each audience member to decipher. Perhaps they were a sign of a rite of passage, the common fare of A&M; students. Maybe they stood in for the experience of budding sexuality, as implied when one young woman sashayed across the stage, burger in hand, then announced contentedly, “I just tried my first Five Guys burger. Now I’m a new woman.” Also typical Campos, the dancers’ technique was not the main focus, but rather the support for a deeper meaning as their movements invited the audience not simply to marvel at their skill, but to explore the depths of their experience.