Whenever an artist tackles farm life as a subject, it piques my interest. The minute I sense the romanticism of rural life, however, my dander gets up. I may live in the city and write about art, but I am a farmer’s daughter.

So how to explain the two completely non-art, non-farm-related non sequiturs that flashed through my mind during "Field Songs," Carl Flink’s new work for his hyper-physical company, Black Label Movement?

One: Where can I get Leslie O’Neill’s dress, but in the green color (like that of unfurling spring leaves) of Laura Selle-Virtucio’s dress? Did they come from (along with the other dancers’ linen shirts, pants and overalls) the J. Jill catalog? (Costumes by Annie Cady). Two: Eddie Oroyan’s arms look like Hugh Jackman’s in "Wolverine."

Such observations are surely not what Flink intended during a work reportedly inspired by days on his grandparents' farm and his work as a Farmers’ Legal Action Group staff attorney assisting farmers enduring foreclosure, as well as his thoughts about suburban encroachment on farmland. But the lay of the land, so to speak, was clear before the dancing began. And it’s a romanticized, simplified version.

Part of the stage is covered in concrete-like tiles, which butt up against a semicircle of sod. On the "concrete" side, the serene Kaori Kenmotsu (in a darling blouse and skirt) sits in a raised garden bed planting tufts of plastic grass as Flink (in shiny black shoes, and maintenance-man blue pants and shirt) sits and broods.

On the grass side, the BLM movers breathe like audible memory; grapple with and support each other during turns, rolls and lifts; repeat the mechanized motions of physical labor; faux-pummel each other in anger, shake with rage, and trap each other in thickets of bent or crossed arms (affects that convey frustrations with and ineffectualness against urban intrusion); and lie exhausted in the grass. Despite the dancers’ often tough, hardscrabble dancing, their dirty faces, and heavy boots, they also sometimes move with the spirited, light-heartedness of nature’s untroubled creatures. And they’re lovely — but decidedly non-farmer-ish — in those linen shirts, pants and shirtwaist frocks.

Predictably, toward the end of the piece, Flink methodically lays down "concrete" tile through the sod expanse, splitting the dancing group in two. The Jinnies’ plaintive rock-roots music (performed live by the local quartet) infuses the movements with additional emotional heft. But the work as psychological portrait of rural culture done wrong, or as a treatise on asphalt vs. grass, nature vs. culture, urban vs. rural, is too-black-and-white for this farm girl turned city dweller.

Flink's 2006 "A Fractured Narrative for a Sad Ending"— a riveting and affecting study in disconnection — packs more of an emotional punch with its intriguing movement phrases and hand gestures that telegraph a secret language. His 2004 "Lost Lullabies" establishes the BLM movement vocabulary of dramatic, intensively physical, often gymnastic interactions between the dancers.

Also on the program are two works by BLM dancers (who also happen to be dancers with Zenon Dance Company). O’Neill’s "Trigger," a solo for BLM co-founder Emilie Plauche Flink, is a meditation on age and memory. And Oroyan really shows off his guns — and those of his cohorts — in his 2000 "Golf Ball Hunting," a work of unabashed testosterone that might send a bunch of wussies like Tap Dogs running.

Black Label Movement. Through June 7, 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday & Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday. $22. Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Avenue, Minneapolis; 612-340-1725.