Kate Weare Company images by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang.

Using dance to plumb the depths and dimensions of human relationships, Kate Weare and her company present their striking new “Garden,” along with established works, in Bates Dance Festival performances at 8 p.m. Friday, July 27, and Saturday, July 28, in Bates College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Tickets cost $24 for the general public, $18 for seniors and $12 for students. For more information or to purchase tickets online, please visit the festival website.

Tickets are also available by phone at 207-786-6161, or by mail or in person; learn more.

The company offers a free lecture-demonstration at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 24, in Schaeffer. A discussion with Weare and her dancers immediately follows the July 27 performance. Dance writer Debra Cash offers an Inside Dance: Understanding Contemporary Performance lecture prior to the July 28 performance, at 7:15 p.m. in Schaeffer.

The Bates Dance Festival, an annual summer series of renowned contemporary dance, celebrates its 30th anniversary by highlighting choreographers whose creative development has been nurtured by the festival.

Founded in 1982, the acclaimed festival brings together an international community of contemporary dance choreographers, performers, educators and students in a cooperative community to study, perform and create new work.

At Bates, in addition to “Garden,” Kate Weare Company will perform Weare’s 2006 piece, “The Light Has Not the Arms to Carry Us,” and an excerpt from 2011′s “Bright Land.”

Weare’s dance merges formal choreography with visceral interpretations of contemporary views of intimacy. In the words of a New York Times writer, she “creates dances that seek to merge the mind and the gut through the power and persuasiveness of the moving body.

“With both rawness and precision, she maps a humanism that is contemporary, disquieting and profoundly stirring.”

“Garden” draws upon primitive issues of origination, collective identity and safety amid the uncontrollable natural world. In it, two men and two women frolic, flirt and fight in the unknown, depicting a world of sensuality and innocence disturbed by dark undercurrents. (The work is suitable for audiences of all ages.)

Weare has been commissioned by dance ensembles around the world, including the AXIS Dance Company of Oakland, Calif., the Scottish Dance Theatre, Australia’s Buzz Dance Theatre and CityDance Ensemble. Last seen at the Bates Dance Festival in 2009, Weare and company will begin developing their next work, “Dark Lark,” during this summer’s residency.

Opening the 2009 performance season of the internationally acclaimed Bates Dance Festival, the nuanced, sensual Kate Weare Company offers two Maine premieres at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11, in Bates College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 365 College St.

Tickets are $20 for the general public and $12 for students and seniors and can be purchased by calling 207-786-6161 after July 6.

The company offers a free lecture-demonstration at 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 6, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

One of the most important choreographers to emerge in recent years, Kate Weare creates fierce, imaginative dances that explore perceptions of identity, intimacy and the basic human urge to move.

Fresh from its New York season, at Bates the Kate Weare Company presents its acclaimed “Bridge of Sighs,” a quartet that looks at the reckless and wise instinct that drive us upstream towards love. Also premiering is “Lean-to,” a nuanced dialogue between movement and sound created in collaboration with composer Michael Gallante, scenic designer Kurt Perschke and lighting designer Brian Jones, and featuring a trio of exceptional dancers.

Kate Weare was nominated for the 2008 Alpert Award in the Arts for choreography. Her honors include a choreographic fellowship from the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and residencies at Joyce SoHo, in Dance New Amsterdam’s Artist in Residence program and at Jacob’s Pillow, which co-commissioned “Bridge of Sighs.”

Weare earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1994. She showed work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Belgrade before moving to New York in 2000. She founded the company in 2005 with the mission of making dances that explore a contemporary view of intimacy through the power and clarity of the moving body.

The company has received commissions from Dance Theater Workshop, the Sonoma Arts Council, WestWave Dance Festival, AXIS Dance Company, CityDance Ensemble, and Danspace Project. In 2007, the company won the top prize of $10,000 from the Joyce Theater Foundation’s A.W.A.R.D. Show, in which the audience votes on the best modern dance from among 16 competing companies.

In addition to mainstage performances, the Bates Dance Festival offers a selection of free and low-cost events. Additional information, including ticket prices and event locations, is available on the festival Web site.