When thinking of Emily Dickinson, one might picture a kindly woman in a white dress who periodically took breaks from her gardening to write a little poetry. Oh, Em, we hardly knew ye.

BosmaDance’s vibrant work, Violet in my Winter, moves far beyond the breezy misanthropy and chuckling morbidity we encountered from Dickinson in grade school. Choreographer Meisha Bosma reveals a striking passion that resided beneath Dickinson’s seemingly quiet life.

Violet in my Winter does a lot with a little; the show clocks in at about 45 minutes and featires just four dancers. Performed in an intimate blackbox space, BosmaDance makes the most of its sparse staging. The back wall was accented with a suspended wave of red velvet. Centerstage, a simple wood desk, topped with a pyramid of pencils, resided (a direct reference to the show’s first poem). While these touches gave a distinctive character to the space, there are still moments when the spot feels restricting.

The dancing itself, though, is captivating. Bosma’s flair for the theatrical and the acrobatic enlivens the poems, which act as a soundtrack of sorts for several segments. Through slight changes in expression and gesture, the dancers go beyond just representing an emotion to fully communicating it. One dance seems slightly forlorn; another seems wary. The performance itself builds on interaction between the women, which feels natural. The all-female cast performs without a hint of artifice. The jumps are spontaneous reactions; the lifts are swift and arc through air as if they were casual conversations.