Local presenters have stepped up their support of the Boston dance community by offering their organizations as producers. CRASHarts, the contemporary-arts division of World Music, has launched a two-tier series to present area choreographers, starting with last spring’s sold-out "Ten’s the Limit" at Central Square’s Green Street Studios. Following the lead of the Boston Theater Marathon, a 10-minute-play festival that takes place each year at Boston University’s Playwrights’ Theatre, "Ten’s the Limit" (which will be repeated this spring) is an informal showcase allowing each participating choreographer a 10-minute slot.

Next Friday and Saturday, CRASHarts introduces another program that’s planned to be an annual event, "Dance Straight Up!", which gives four choreographers a commission — and a commissioning fee — to create new works. This year’s quartet: Brenda Divelbliss, a dance-faculty member at Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School who also teaches at Harvard’s dance program; Carol Somers, who danced with a number of companies in New York before moving to the Boston area in 1994; Hoi polloi’s Sara Sweet Rabidoux, a veteran of 10 years teaching at the Bates Summer Dance Festival; and Marcus Schulkind, now the grand old man of the Boston modern-dance world. They were chosen from 37 applicants and awarded $3000 apiece. CRASHarts is also providing a lighting designer and stage manager and paying the theater-rental charges.

The selection process is explained by World Music’s founder and executive director, Maure Aronson, who came to Boston from his native South Africa in 1985 and served as general manager for two Boston modern-dance companies of beloved memory: Beth Soll & Company and Concert Dance Company. "Eight companies were chosen from the videotapes that they submitted. The two New York–based judges — Diedre Valenti from the Lisa Booth Management Company and Laura Colby from Elsie Management — came to Boston for live auditions by the semifinalists, who were whittled down to four finalists."

These four have 20 minutes apiece to show one or more works, "but one of them must be a world premiere," Aronson points out. Divelbliss has choreographed a new duet to a taped piece of music written by the local group the Lothars for one guitar and four theremins ("not an instrument usually seen in plural form," she observes). Another piece of music for the duet was composed by Angus Maclaurin, who lives in Portland, Maine; Divelbliss describes it as sounding "like finely tuned glass bells."

Carol Somers is experimenting with a new abstract style. Her quartet North Wind will be performed to a score by Acton composer Stuart Jones, and she herself will dance in it. Marcus Schulkind is showing a solo that he premiered last spring at "Ten’s the Limit" about the death of his father (Lorraine Chapman will perform it) and a trio to "some flute music by Vivaldi. The new work is called Mise en Plus, which means everything in its place."

Sara Sweet Rabidoux says her new work "marks the first of a new sort of style. I have been a traditionalist in the past. I’ve never used props and everything was very short." But she describes her 17-minute-long premiere Beach Blanket Butoh as "the Rite of Spring meets John Waters. It’s for five dancers, including a cameo for me. Gidget and butoh were born at the same time. Beach culture is people avoiding what’s going on; butoh is the opposite."

Aronson has kept his hands off the creative process. "As a producer, I don’t like to see the work until it’s done. I like to give the artists all the freedom possible. It’s very exciting. You can see works by four different choreographers, all of them based in Boston. In terms of choice, it was purely quality.

CRASHarts presents "Dance Straight Up!" next Friday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, December 7, at 8 p.m. at Blackman Theatre, Northeastern University. Tickets are $25; call CRASHarts at (617) 876-4275.