Light and shadow: dance in Prague today.

The city of Prague is home to a small, tight-knit dance scene, producing artists of increasing significance. Except for traditional state-approved ballet and folk dance, as well as a stagnant form of the 1950s dance/puppetry craze known as Black Light Theatre, Czech arts took a severe battering under 50 years of Communist rule.

Dance and its infrastructures have been almost entirely reborn since the Velvet Revolution 16 years ago. The period has seen the establishment of new training institutions and venues, a variety of festivals with different stylistic focuses, and the emergence of a young but dedicated dance community. But it has been only during the last few years, as post-revolution graduates of those institutions have absorbed new influences and gained in experience and maturity, that the possibility of contemporary Czech dance of international quality has appeared.

Czech culture has a history of embracing advanced technology. A striking development has been the excellent collaborations between choreographers and pioneering lighting designers or multimedia artists. Both Petra Hauerova and VerTeDance, who are the most recent winners of the substantial Sazka Prize for Czech modern dance choreography, make exceptional use of lighting and technological innovations.

Hauerova and her team of technological artists, TOW, broke stunning ground with Night Moth in 2004, combining delicate and complex laser lighting effects with raw, expressive movement and heartfelt Central European angst. Crackling, fluorescent light lines relentlessly drew themselves across a resounding velvety blackness like a spider's web or gun sight, sweeping for its victim. The illumination caught glimpses of a woman, strangely near or distant, as she streaked silently through the darkness, or was locked into panic-stricken movement phrases by the predatory light structure. This is an utterly menacing, moving, and original work.

VerTeDance (the languidly virtuosic Tereza Ondrova and the architecture-trained Verouika Knytlova), a duo of dancer/choreographers in their mid-20s, created Circle II and Silent Talk in 2004 and 2005. These works use computer technology to add to pure dance a series of video projections and a shimmering overlay of precision lighting effects.

Elements of Czech folk arts, mime, and puppetry also reappear in new dance in Prague, both classical and modern, often making for works of playful theatricality. They involve ingenious use of costumes, props and sets, absurdist humor, and lyrical, narrative qualities. The dance improvisation/clown troupe Krepsko has a marvelously delicate and melancholy touch, performing simple movements or befuddled everyday actions with a tantalizing, weightless quality. Kristina Lhotakova and Ladislav Soukup examine quiet human inadequacy and ordinary heroism in their deliberately non-virtuosic works, which recruit members of the public. People and Occupations in 2004 featured three middle-aged men dancing with touching commitment and innocent intrepidity, while their banal real life details are related to the audience verbally.

A major upheaval in the staffing of the Prague National Theatre (combining drama, opera, and ballet departments) in 2002-03 saw a large-scale rebranding of the institution and the replacement of former leaders. The new director of ballet at the Prague National Theatre, Petr Zuzka, has infused the company with a host of new teachers and guest choreographers from around the world, and the dancers have rapidly expanded their technical and stylistic repertoire. As the director of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Ivanka Kubicova, explained: "Although Prague produces dancers well equipped for modern ballet choreography, there are no notable ballet choreographers in Prague at present. Therefore all significant National Ballet productions are the work of foreign choreographers."

Kubicova also stressed the concern of the dance community about the recently appointed new Minister of Culture, who is not expected to prioritize the funding of dance, and thus undo recent advances. Support from dedicated individuals, such as Prague-based French producer Marie Kinsky and her organization SE.S.TA., will become increasingly important. As long as the field can manage to survive in a growing free market economy, the future looks bright for Czech dance.