Usually, you get to see local dance groups only in odd architectural spaces or in studios. They can look weighed down in cramped venues such as the Drake Theater or have trouble building momentum at the wingless Community Education Center (CEC). Those are fine spaces for works in progress, soloists, and little chamber concerts. But when you see the DanceBoom! lineup in a fine house such as the Wilma, you realize you have been looking at diamonds in the rough.

Last Wednesday, Headlong Dance Theater looked positively polished there. Hiroshi Iwasaki's atmospheric set and lighting and City of Horns' original sound design made me think of Gracelessness as a marsh at twilight. The dance - a premiere - was marked by imbalances and falls after off-center twists, intricate knottings of two or more dancers, and up-tempo duets between Christy Lee and Nicole Cousineau.

Subirdia was, unlike Gracelessness, vintage Headlong. Iwasaki's lighting and set (picket fences, itsy-bitsy bungalows) joined Lisa Leaverton's costumes of golf pants, tennis sweater and pedal pushers. Also a premiere, Subirdia yanked laughter from the audience with its twittery movement.

Dancing right on the music - Martin Denny's "Sputnik" with Rick Henderson's additional sound effects - the "Subirds" gathered around the punchbowl/birdbath as well as on the ground a la June Taylor. The males, David Brick and Andrew Simonet, jumped the fences to peck each other off his territory, Heather Murphy gave a soulful performance as a housewife/bird fantasizing about an astronaut, but a mere flick of Nichole Canuso's forbidding eyebrow stopped her in her tracks.