As the front bumper of the Honda Civic was smashing into the back bumper of my Honda Accord last month, I couldn't help thinking about how I'd asked the universe for this to happen.

I'd been daydreaming for months about how getting rid of my car would save me money and help me get more exercise.

Maybe that influenced me to stop in the middle of the road to pick up a passenger, or attracted the inattentive driver who failed to slow down as she approached me, totaling my car in an instant.

It was an unfortunate incident, but not without its benefits.

Andrea Jane Dispenziere can relate. After returning from a monthlong tour of France with the rest of the Ririe-Woodbury dancers in October, she was feeling emotionally wiped out. "We had just come back from this incredible series of traveling, touring, and dancing, and I was mired in it. I was questioning my craft," she tells me during a rehearsal break at the Rose Wagner Center. "It was discordance that I was struggling with."

On Nov. 23, while giving a lecture demonstration at an elementary school, she was injured. "I tweaked my back," she says. "I do a windmill in my solo for the kids. I think it was just a repetitive overuse injury from doing it so many times on cold tile floors and then performing on a hard stage at our last venue contributed to the stress building up. And I also notice that because I'm an emotional individual, when I hold stress, it tends to manifest itself somewhere in my body if I don't take of my emotions the correct way."

The eventual diagnosis was a cracked rib. The result was that "Gravity," the new piece that artistic director and choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen was in the process of setting on the company, would be finished for five dancers instead of six.

"In 'Gravity,' because I'm dealing with that element of fall, and drop and push and pull, it's very physically demanding," Boye-Christensen explains in a phone interview. "It's probably the most physically daring piece I've done so far."

Dispenziere will still appear in the company's upcoming performance, but only in one repertory piece, "Interiors." Guest dancer Jacquelyn Potts will fill in for her in "Turf," while the other repertory piece, "Stirrings," will feature former company member Jo Blake.

During the rehearsal process for "Gravity," Dispenziere has been watching from the sidelines. She says it's had some unexpected benefits.

"It's been very inspiring because I'm watching these dancers that are my peers," she says, "and they are such expressions of beauty when they do this movement, and it reminded me of how much I love my craft, and all questioning just went away."

As she watches, she says, she's been filling a notebook with ideas for her own dancing, on how to be more specific and clear.

It's also led her to discover more mental control. Dispenziere is a certified yoga instructor, but she'd never really focused on just the mental aspect of meditation until this injury.

"If you can physicalize something, that's like one level of skill. But the next level is if you can do it solely with your mind," she says. "If you become so advanced that you can just get into that state without having to go through the postures, that's like the same thing as Mr. Miyagi being able to stop the fly with his eyes."

A recent guest choreographer, Karole Armitage, characterized Dispenziere as "a tough New Jersey chick" in a talk back, but Boye-Christensen says she doesn't see that. "There's a real vulnerable and sensitive side to her, and that, for me, is what's interesting," she says.

Dispenziere agrees. "I appear tough because I have this muscularity, and I think a lot of people think that that's what my personality is like," she says. "But I'm very emotionally sensitive, which is why I think I had to be an artist in the first place, because I just feel things and notice things deeply. My emotions are something I've had to learn how to maintain because they can become overpowering. But that's where I get my source of inspiration, so I wouldn't trade it for the world."

She tears up several times during our hour-long interview, most notably as she recalls her childhood modern dance studio, Robin Harrington School of Dance. "It was a really beautiful dance community that she cultivated, and it helped me learn to love dance and not get sick of it," she recalls.

Dispenziere met Boye-Christensen when she was a senior at New York University and Boye-Christensen came to choreograph a piece, selected Dispenziere as a soloist after an audition process. "There's a real expressiveness in her body that she was able to tap into easily," Boye-Christensen explains. "She's very musical, and capable of understanding the movement from an inner place."

Dispenziere says that Boye-Christensen's movement reminded her of the European style she'd experienced while studying in Austria, and she enjoyed it so much that she auditioned for Ririe-Woodbury, joining the company in 2008.

Boye-Christensen is from Denmark, which is how she knows Jens Hørsving, the Copenhagen composer who created the music for "Gravity" and approached her about choreographing it. "The phenomena of gravity is very exciting and fundamental to our existence," he tells me, during an interview at the Rose Wagner Center a week after my talk with Dispenziere. "Dancers and musicians are fighting gravity to express ourselves."

Boye-Christensen says that the idea of gravity seemed almost too commonplace for her at first, but then she began to focus on the psychological gravity in relationships and social issues.

"It's rare for me to be able to work with composers because music is so hugely important to me in terms of inspiring the process," Boye-Christensen said. "He understands the physicality of dance. I need a really strong beat, to bite into, to lean the choreography up against."

Hørsving returns the appreciation. "I like her style. She's very dynamic and clear. It's very natural to work with her," he says, acknowledging that Boye-Christensen uses a lot of pushing and pulling in her work that made her a good fit when he was thinking of a choreographer to help him create a show about gravity.

There are six sections to his composition, he says, which deal with: forward momentum, weightlessness, opening, reaction, black holes and the crushing gravity of Earth.

Also with us at The Rose are three members of Figura, the well-known Danish contemporary music ensemble who'll be performing the composition live during the performance. Present are Jens Hørsving's wife, clarinetist Anna Klett; percussionist Frans Hansen; and double bass player Jesper Egelund.

They're all here thanks to funding from Denmark's National Foundation for the Arts. ("It's revealing how the arts are perceived in Europe compared to how they're perceived here," Boye-Christensen says.)

Playing live gives them a chance to integrate their playing with the dancers' movements, says Hansen, explaining that they adjust the length of the pieces to fit the dances as they happen.

There will also be two musical numbers performed without dancers. Klett will play a piece by American composer Derek Bermel, and Egelund will play a piece by Icelandic-German composer Steingrimur Rohloff.

Boye-Christensen says that "Gravity" will remain a five-person piece forever.

Dispenziere says, "I was thinking, 'Oh man, I would love to be in this piece,' but seeing it from the outside, it's actually quite beautiful with an odd number. It just kind of shakes the space up a little bit, because even numbers are just so square and perfect. It's almost more organic to have five."

She's reported to be healing nicely. After "Gravity," she'll get a two-week rest. She may have to take it easy for the company's children's show in January, but she's expected to be able to be a full participant in the rest of the season. She's also been working with an Alexander Technique teacher once a week to help her learn more efficient ways of moving with less risk of injury.

"It happens to almost all of us as dancers," Boye-Christensen comments. "At some point or another, something happens, and you just become very aware of where you need to protect yourself in the future."

At 23, Dispenziere says, she's "the baby of the company," in her second season, and plans on at least a few more years dancing with Ririe-Woodbury.

Her current state reminds her a lot of the crow position in yoga, she tells me. "That's the one that you assume when you need to gain a higher perspective," she says. "It's like climbing up to the top of the building and looking down and having the epiphany that, 'Oh, the world is so small and this is what it's all about.' It was kind of nice to get out of my little microcosm and see the big picture."