It's a 1931 film featuring Greta Garbo and also a British steam-powered car. It's the simple act of taking in a breath. Inspiration is many things. In the case of two local dance companies, it goes hand in hand with collaboration.

Sue Schroeder, artistic director of CORE Performance Company, says her inspiration came first from Houston's visual arts scene.

"The work we're doing is art-making, using dance as the medium," Schroeder said.

CORE opens its 32nd season at Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex this weekend with three premieres gathered under the collective title "Shift." Leslie Scates' "herd" looks at, among other things, "a place where we exist as a virtuosic individual and a known member of a close-knit group." Lori Teague's "I felt my life with both hands" is inspired by Emily Dickinson, and Shroeder's contribution, "Still," uses Federico Garcia Lorca's poem "La Escuela" as a point of departure.

Schroeder says all three dances began with "the seed of improvisation," a collaborative idea, even if some of the dances have evolved into set pieces. "Improvisation requires that the dancers be artists as well," she said, "since they must have the facility to create."

Often misunderstood and maligned, improvisation isn't a free-for-all. "I could do that, but it probably would not show a cohesive notion, except perhaps chaos," Schroeder said. "Structured work is like jazz musicians improvising on a score, with varying levels of specificity and open-endedness. The beauty is that you access both the genius of other bodies and movement that is organic to them, as opposed to imposing something."

Equally inspired, Hope Stone Dance artistic director Jane Weiner is working on her first collaboration with Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, which premieres at the Wortham Theater Center Nov. 9-10. Provocatively called "Squared Dancer," the piece also explores structure and freedom.

"We are squared. As dancers, our lives are highly regimented," Weiner said, "but by creating those boundaries, we also have freedom onstage, and that expression makes us artists."

The joined force of two of Houston's most prominent companies offers Weiner the potential, as she described it, of "a marching band." She likened the latter part of her new piece to "a modern-dance hoedown."

What would a hoedown be without a violin? Weiner acknowledged that for at least seven years, she's had it in the back of her head to choreograph to electric violin music.

A Web search put her in touch with composer Marc Hennessey and his To All My Dear Friends, whom Weiner described as "a really cool guy from Asheville." Hennessey will perform his original compositions for all the performances.

"He sent me a bunch of his work, really green and raw, things that hadn't been heard by anyone," Weiner said. After telephone discussions, she received a 20-minute demo she popped into her iPad on the way home from an early rehearsal.

"Oh my God, I felt like he had climbed into my head and knew exactly what I wanted," she said. "He really listens, a true collaborator!"

Theodore Bale is a freelance arts writer.

CORE Performance Company, Friday-Saturday at Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, 2201 Preston. Free. Information:

Hope Stone Dance and Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, Nov. 9-10 at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. Tickets: $15-$45 at 713-522-6375 and or