Danza en Diciembre.

Danza en Diciembre, Madrid's annual winter season of contemporary dance, has for many years been a mainstay of the city's dance programming and an important showcase for established Spanish choreographers. The dynamic Diez & Diez Danza opened the most recent festival, drawing crowds of local fans to the theater during one of Spain's five-day weekends, when most venues feel the results of a massive exodus from the city. As usual, choreographers Monica Runde and Pedro Berdayes shared the bill, each contributing a work toward the joint program, entitled "Milagro" ("Miracle"). Berdayes's Si tu vieras lo que veo desde aqui ("If You Saw What I See From Here") is the choreographer's personal vision of the individual's relationship to contemporary society. Stark images and a strong movement dynamic, characteristic of both his and Runde's work, are the keynotes here and continue in the line of the company's previous pieces. An injury necessitated the programming of a duo performed by the two company directors in lieu of Runde's La realidad y el deseo ("Reality and Desire"). A reflection of images and movements seen in previous works of theirs, Anyway ended in a coup de theatre with both dancers suspended in harnesses midair and flourishing ghostly streams of talcum powder to the strains of Freddy Mercury singing "I Want to Break Free." Diez & Diez has developed its own particular aesthetic, often concerned with the darker sides of human desire and expressed with intense physicality, that links its work with other European currents of dance theater.

Lanonima Imperial presented Moving Landscape, with choreography by Juan Carlos Garcia and music by Xavier Maristany and Joan Saura performed live onstage. Unfortunately, illness prevented me from seeing this new work by one of Barcelona's most interesting dance companies.

Next to visit the Olimpia was Danat Dansa, another veteran ensemble from Barcelona with a well-established choreographic and aesthetic idiom. Danat's work is usually characterized by intense, almost brutal, energy. Jinete de peces sobre la ciudad ("Rider of Fish Over the City") takes the effect of the urban environment on the individual as its theme, with references to Italian novelist Italo Calvino's The Invisible Cities and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The set, with its complex metal scaffolding, wooden structures, and red draperies, offers multiple levels and spaces for the dancers to explore. The driving music by the Gringos, with hints of North African influences, helps to maintain the pace. What was most noticeable in Jinete was a new use of stillness and sustained dynamics, an attention to formal elements of composition, and a gentler, more dreamlike energy and sensual tone, with relationships that seemed to develop to a greater extent than in previous works by Danat. It's as though a subtler human element is being sought here rather than the primitive energy characteristic of the company's previous works.

Danza en Diciembre closed with Retratos en la memoria ("Portraits in Memory"), the first work in contemporary dance produced by Seville's new Centro Andaluz de Danza. Catalonian choreographer Ramon Oller, familiar to New York audiences for his new Tears for Violeta at Ballet Hispanico, was invited to set a work on dancers from his own company as well as Andalusian dancers auditioned for the occasion. Guest artist Nuria Moreno shared the bill with Oller as Paulino and Monsina, a pair of itinerant musicians invited to entertain at a Christmas party somewhere in Andalusia. The complex relationships that develop between guests, hosts, and musicians during the soiree form the basis of this nostalgic look at not-so-long-ago Spanish society. The weight of this evocative and tender piece is carried by the excellent set, choice of music, and development of characters, creating a multileveled dramatic context for the movement itself, which is almost secondary. Given the subject matter, this ensemble work was seen to perfection during the holiday season. The audience's pleasure was palpable.