Last year, The Baltimore Sun noted that the city “has a reputation as being inhospitable to dance.” Local choreographer/director/dancer-about-town Lily Susskind begs to differ. When prompted, she rattles off a list of thriving Baltimore dance communities: social partner dance (swing, salsa, tango); capoeira; burlesque; circus arts like hooping and aerials; Baltimore club dance; breakers, poppers, lockers. There’s hand dancing, also known as D.C. Swing, a permutation of swing dancing that has its origin in this region. There’s not a ton of contra dancing in Baltimore, but there’s plenty in the region. Susskind gets visibly excited as she goes on; she’s not bouncing in her chair at a Remington coffee shop, but she might as well be. “You can go to Windup Space on a Friday night, and there’s just crews and crews of breakers,” she says with genuine glee. “Free, amazing dance at a bar in Station North.”

It’s just this enthusiasm that Susskind and co-organizer Caroline Marcantoni hope to harness at Baltimore’s first-ever experimental dance round robin, shaking things up Feb. 26 and 27 at the Lumberhaus (1801 Falls Road) in the Station North Arts District. Featuring pieces by both Marcantoni and Susskind’s Effervescent Collective, the show also includes b-boy crew the International Flow Syndicate, performing artist Jake Dibeler, and the Baltimore Experimental Dance Collective, among others; the Effervescent Collective’s web site notes, “There will also be aerial vogueing, strawberry sauce, performative Popping, and twist-tie accessories.” The pieces, all less than five minutes, are united by a common attitude that Susskind describes as “upbeat, Saturday-night appropriate.” She leans in, grinning, and promises “a lot of sass.”

In many ways, the DIY dance movement has been a long time coming. As an art form, dance is amazingly accessible—all you need, after all, is a body and some space to move around in; music helps, but isn’t necessary. But while house shows, underground galleries, and warehouse theater have long had a local presence, dance has had a harder time gaining a foothold. When Urbanite published its “State of the Arts” article last year, Baltimore dance wasn’t even mentioned.

In part, Susskind points out, this situation is because the dance world is still dominated by an outdated high/low-art split: “Real” dancers are rail-thin, classically trained, and perform on a stage; the rest of us just flail around in clubs. And it’s just this division that Susskind and Marcantoni are hoping to dissolve—with both the dance round robin and their other movement-based projects. According to Marcantoni, dance is inherently democratic. “Everyone can dance,” she points out. “When you see a good dance performance, you’re physically moved—you’re stimulated on a level where you too want to dance, even if you don’t want to perform.”