Dancing to Move Body, Mind, Spirit : Choreography: Margie Gillis is a woman under the influence of painting, rock and the raw stuff of experience. Praised as a powerful and unconventional artist, she will teach and perform at Saddleback College.

Ask most modern dancers who influenced them and typically a litany of leaders in the field spills forth. Ask Margie Gillis, and expect something different.

“Originally, I didn’t know the dance world very well,” said the Montreal-based solo dance artist who began dancing professionally as a child. She will give a master class today followed on Saturday by a solo recital at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. “I knew painters and rock ‘n’ roll. I was very affected by Van Gogh and Janis Joplin.”

Not surprisingly, friends and acquaintances also had an impact on Gillis, who creates trenchant character studies, paints a panoramic canvas of human feeling, and is consistently praised by critics as an engrossing performer of great emotional as well as physical power and range.

“I saw the romance or the history or the story of peoples’ lives and was so impressed with what made them run, their motivations, what their angels or demons were, their daily heroics. These things fascinated me and I began to translate them into movement.”

The eight-piece concert Gillis will perform at the McKinney Theatre is apt to reflect this enduring fascination. She choreographed all but two of the works; the others were crafted by fellow Canadian and artistic adviser Stephanie Ballard and Martha Clarke, a leading New York choreographer.

Clarke’s “Nocturne” (1979), finds an aged, decrepit ballerina stumbling through her steps, and “The Little Animal” (1986) is a study of individuals’ inner growth and evolution.

“We are in a state of evolution, we are not evolved,” said Gillis in a post-rehearsal phone interview from a friend’s home in Sherman Oaks. “I think particularly in North America, we see ourselves as the pinnacle of everything, whereas inside there’s a little creature groping, yearning and trying to understand.”

“How the Rosehips Quiver” (1983) at about 20 minutes, the program’s longest vignette, is about “a young woman who is trying to find her way in society. She struggles to understand love, to understand a society that is predominantly male dominated, and to retain her own sense of identity throughout all of this.

“I definitely do emotional work, but it’s emotional, intelligent and spiritual,” Gillis explained. “I think that all these aspects go into physicality, so I’ll start from the inside out--I’ll start with the feeling and the thought pattern of the character I’m dealing with, and I’ll move from that basis. If you take a gesture and enlarge it, it becomes movement; enlarge it again, and it becomes dance.

“I’m particularly interested in our daily courages, in how we find wisdom, how we celebrate joy . . . those things that connect us with nature. I’m very excited by the human spirit and its potential and art allows us to see what we can become.”

Technically, Gillis uses “any and everything” for an eclectic, personalized blend that mines classical ballet, early and recent modern dance forms, everyday gesture, gymnastics and mime. The music she uses is similarly varied, from Saint-Saens to Tom Waits, as are her costumes and 21 different hairstyles. She sometimes wears loose her long, flowing hair, which has become a trademark.

The daughter of two Canadian Olympic skiers and whose brother, Christopher, is a member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Gillis began studying dance and gymnastics at 3. For a while she focused largely on ballet, but branched out to “release and explore emotion, rather than control it.” At 18, she decided she had “something to say” and took up choreography, thus launching her solo career.

“I was deeply committed to what I felt and thought about the human condition, and I didn’t feel I could ask anyone else to portray that or ask for the kind of commitment I was willing to give on all levels,” Gillis said.

An introspective, yet warm, ingratiating and impassioned woman, Gillis said she finds concepts for her works simply by living life.

“The heart is just such an expansive place and the world is just so full of ideas and problems that need solutions,” she said. “I find the world is a very difficult, stressful place to live, and I think there’s a lot of pressure to forget the things that give us our inner strength.”

Gillis, 37, had her own share of Angst while enduring what she calls a nervous breakdown through most of her adolescence. It began at age 7 when her father left the family. While not defensive about the subject, she said she used to talk more about it but became disturbed when people attributed her artistic insight to her suffering.

“I really don’t buy into the notion that one has to suffer in order to create great works,” she said, adding with an ironic laugh, “I think suffering is just everywhere.” And while her own emotional turmoil may have “sensitized” her to life at a young age, she said, “it is still nothing compared to what most people in the world go through. My menial little personal story is not that important.”

Gillis, who has been touring internationally for more than 10 years, spends about half the year on the road and the remainder performing or choreographing at home in Montreal. At Saddleback, she will also conduct a master class, to be held today at 11 a.m. in the college Dance Studio. It is open to all dancers.

“I teach a set of exercises designed to excite people’s curiosity, to enable them to feel the joy of moving, to understand the components of movement--bone, muscle, thought, emotion and spirit--and to teach them to use their total self through physicality. Sometimes as dancers we depend too much on intelligence. I think the body has a lot to teach us, and not all our experiences and wisdom come through or to the brain. Often we have experiences, then the brain sorts them out.”