If dance lives in the bodies of the artists who perform it, then volumes of fascinating history reside in the limbs of Sara Shelton Mann, who took the CounterPulse stage on Friday for the premiere of an autobiographical solo “Sara (the Smuggler).” Conceived and choreographed by Circo Zero’s Keith Hennessy with sound score by Mann’s longtime collaborator Norman Rutherford--both Contraband alums—Sara (the Smuggler) is a review of her life via dance and theater, and what a life it is. The title is a sly reference to the dance collective Contraband, which Mann founded in the 1980s and which disbanded in 1996. Under a heavy gold veil, a primal energy and corkscrewing arms and fingers recall German expressionist Mary Wigman’s famous “Witch Dance.” In a Proustian step into her past as a protege of choreographer Alwin Nikolais, Mann is specific, almost mathematical in her precision, and when she leads audience members in a bit of therapeutic movement alchemy, the air crackles with exuberance. Matter-of-fact descriptions of the Klan burning a cross on the lawn of the house in which she was staying, or a coat hanger abortion in the late 1940s have no less power than wry observations on modern dance legends--Alwin Nikolais’ class was terrifying and ecstatic, and Merce [Cunningham] danced like a lion, but had secrets that he didn’t teach. Yet “Sara” is more than a simple tribute, it’s an embodied history of one of the most influential figures in modern dance.