For Johanna Kirk, dance was the only answer. When she was a young child, she yearned to move, something that drove her parents crazy until she started taking dance lessons.

"I begged to dance. I always felt comfortable expressing myself with movement. My parents were very nervous about putting me in a competitive environment, but I was always dancing around the house," Kirk said.

She started taking classes from Leah Stevens Clark when she was 11 and joined Balance Dance Co. - a modern company for young dancers - a year later.

"Leah was my dance teacher until I went to college. She was so influential. I didn't have a body for dance, and she appreciated that there was something unique about the way I moved," Kirk, 23, said. "That it wasn't wrong and encouraged me to do modern dance and come up with my own kind of movement."

Kirk has returned to Boise to work with the new generation of Balance dancers and perform, along with Clark, in Drop Dance Collective's concert this weekend.

You also will see her choreography performed by the new generation of Balance dancers in a works-in-progress performance in conjunction with the Drop performances.

Kirk isn't the only dancer making a return in this concert. Erin Elliott, who built a career with Momix, a dance company currently based out of Connecticut, and who worked with director Julie Taymor and Daniel Ezralow on the film "Across the Universe," will perform a solo with Drop called "Outlined in Black."

The concert also features work by Boise's Kelli Brown, Harriett Jastremsky and Drop founder Helene Peterson.

Being home is always an interesting experience, Kirk said, especially when she comes back to work with Balance.

"It's very odd to be the grownup," she said. "Part of me still feels like a little kid who started dancing here."

From the moment Clark met Kirk, she knew that there was something special about her.

"Johanna is probably the most instinctual performer I've ever known. Her first year in Balance she had a little 6-second solo where she looked at her hand. It was like she's seeing her hand for the first time. She has this presence that no one else has," Clark said.

The lessons Kirk learned in Balance have followed her through her life and eventually led her to a modern dance career. Kirk originally went to Barnard College at Columbia University to study neuroscience but ended up earning a degree in dance.

"I'm really a big science-brained nerd," she said. "But dancing is really the most honest form of expression for me. I was surprised to find myself changing my major."

Kirk is the daughter of well-known Boise jazz pianist Kevin Kirk and his wife, Ginger, a painter. Kirk considers home to be New York City, where she lives now, although she is committed to a year in Boise, a place that keeps drawing her back and inspiring her work.

For Kirk, modern dance is as much an intellectual challenge as it is a physical one. Her solo - "'03" - was sparked by a visit to Boise a few years ago. But don't think it's auto-biographical in any way, she said.

"It started with a crystal-clear memory. I'm a visual thinker," she said.

Because Kirk synthesizes the ideas of math and movement, her pieces could be distilled into complex equations.

For "'03," she started with three tableaus connected to memories of Boise that create the pillars of the piece. Each one is based on an emotion and is given its own character.

From there, she created a movement challenge to get her from moment to moment. She bought in a few props and costumes.

"I've always had a sense of wonder and fascination with the body and its potential," Kirk said. "The piece is really about that. It's not a very pretty piece."

Her creative challenges have grown from the fact that her body wasn't built for dance. That has been the most difficult thing about building a dance career, but it also is the key to her success. She has found choreographers to work with in New York and opportunities that allow her to bring all she has to the table.

For Clark, who founded Balance to develop dancers who also are well-balanced individuals - mentally and emotionally -Kirk's success is most gratifying.

"She doesn't dance like anyone else, and she doesn't look like anyone else. So, I'm most proud of her for finding her path," Clark said. "I'm proud of choreographers who can see that. Sometimes we (choreographers) are so narcissistic that we want our dancers to look like us. She is not that person, and I'm proud of the dance world for seeing how unique and how special she is."