Dance - Prayful postures

Louise Runyon might be billing her new concert, Dances of an Open Heart, as a retrospective of her work (a daunting prospect, considering she’s been artistically active since 1980), but the performance is actually more complex than that.

The collaborative show, featuring original artwork by Helen Durant and three solo modern dance pieces by Runyon, includes new and old works with elements as diverse as poetry, painting and even puppetry.

Most notably, the performance includes the premiere of a new dance called “Le Monde et le Monastere” (or “And the World Came to the Monastery”). Runyon’s choreography for the piece was inspired by her recent visit to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia, which she calls “kind of like the end of the world.”

The new piece takes clues from Buddhist prayer prostrations and also includes gestures from Christianity, Islam and Judaism. But Runyon makes some surprising associations with these sacred movements.

“It was just very interesting to me to find that this whole business of coming up and going down and opening and closing is common to movements of prayer and spirituality and also, you know, a sexual movement,” she says. “It’s the same movement in the spine.”

In a broader sense, Runyon says the show represents the search for unity and connection, a theme that is reflected in the paintings, collages and drawings by Durant, on display in the lobby and throughout 7 Stages’ building.

The Louise Runyon Barth Dance Company’s Dances of an Open Heart will be performed Jan. 25-27 at 8 p.m. in the Back Stage at 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave. $12-$14. 404-728-8991.??