Festival International de Nouvelle Danse.

Faultless dancing crowned the eighth Festival International de Nouvelle Danse (International Festival of New Dance). Slightly smaller than its recent predecessors, FIND '97 featured ritual and rigor, spirituality and self-indulgence, and comedy and cacophony, sometimes all at once. Twenty-three companies from Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Holland, and the U.S. performed twenty different shows. There were also untallied entrants in the increasingly active Off-festival, mainly by Montreal groups.

While no great love affair emerged like the one Montreal forged with France's Groupe Emile Dubois in 1985 or surprises like FIND '95's quixotic Cie. C. de la B. from Belgium, there was a lot of good, solid, even illuminating work, such as the kaleidoscopic Cartes Postales de Chimere ("Imaginary Postcards") by Montreal's Louise Bedard, 1996 Bagnolet winner and 1997 recipient of Canada's Chalmers award for her exceptional contribution to Canadian dance during the last two years.

This year Iberian dance was spotlighted by FIND, drawing attention to Spain and Portugal, two countries with little history of contemporary dance. After emerging from repressive regimes, these countries -- particularly Portugal -- worked in isolation to develop a look quite unlike any other in Europe.

FIND was anchored at either end by two Spanish companies. Compania Vicente Saez opened with a beautiful and evocative swirl of ritual dedicated to the mother goddess, Regina Mater. Ballet Cristina Hoyos, a large, world-acclaimed flamenco company, put lberion dance into context with a look at the passionate marriage of old and new traditions in Andalusian Pathways. Hoyos's company was voted the public favorite, and was awarded the festival's Prix du Public.

Monica Valenciano, the third Spanish guest, was billed as the "queen of Madrid's underground," a tantalizing tag that proved misleading. A series of short solos indicated that this charming young artist is essentially self-absorbed. Her interest in performance art was more evident than her interest in dance as she mumbled and pointed, pushing across a row of seated spectators and squealing at her empty stage. However, she was delightful in a brief spontaneous-looking dance.

Self-indulgence, wicked humor, and a fascination with performance art were also mainstays of three Portuguese companies beaded by Vera Mantero (Fall of an Ego), Joao Fiadeiro (self(ish)-portrait), and Clara Andermatt (Cio Azul and Poemas de Amor). Insisting that performance art is dance, Mantero's group mimed, joked, and moved in an ungainly and undancerly way as it cluttered its environment with GI Joes, fans, flowers, and all kinds of junk until it resembled an Arab souk. In a later solo, Mantero added to Fiadeiro's and Andermatt's thesis that dance must extend to the face with rubbery, funny grimaces.

Provocation is an unwritten but understood goal of FIND, calling for immediate response from dancer and spectator alike, and reaching beyond the nice-nice words describing the festival's mandate, like promoting public awareness, developing an audience, promoting Canadian artists, and reinforcing Montreal's position as an international dance capital.

The Quebec contingent was most theatrical and most successful, especially in stunning solos like two soulful identity quests by Irene Stamou, Louise Bedard's feminist travelogue, and Roger Sinha's biting autobiographical commentary about racism and martial arts, Burning Skin.

Intelligent use of provocation seized the attention in Burning Skin. Selfish provocation was a turnoff in Stephen Petronio's torso-and-arms dance, #3, which was a deliberate sexual come-on. Outrageous? Yes. And beautiful. Self-indulgent, too. In fact, it was a whole lot more interesting than Drawn That Way and Lareigne, two feverishly danced and dreadfully costumed group pieces, which looked positively old-fashioned. Except for the blasting boom-boom of gay-bar sound, Petronio's pretty, virtuoso dances harked back to the New York modern dance of the seventies.

Bigger Quebecois companies O Vertigo (Ginette Laurin) and Le Carre des Lombes (Daniele Desnoyers) fared less well with theatrical and musical elements that sometimes overpowered their productions, La Bete ("The Beast") and Discordantia respectively.

La Bete, with its suggestion of a linear story line and ferocious, choppy, flying physicality, was one of two premieres. The other was Fiadeiro's Is the Self a Portrait?, a companion piece with self(ish)-portait for his Companhia RE.AL, in which the choreographer hung photocopies of his eye on a cord and interspersed questions with forceful improvisation.

Belgium's Pierre Droulers and Holland's Leine & Roebana returned to FIND with very different takes on extreme physicality that were echoed by Vancouver's Holy Body Tattoo. The Dutch group bogged down in academic explorations of manipulation of body parts in The Circle Effect, but the Belgians' sense of fun, speed, sensuality, and stunning sleight of body tricks brought wild applause for the North American premiere of De I'air et du vent ("Of Air and of Wind"). And Holy Body Tattoo tore a hole in the ozone layer with annihilating, radical energy.