TRANS-DANSE ENTRANCES.

TRANS-DANSE ENTRANCES

HIVERNALES DANCE FESTIVAL AVIGNON, FRANCE FEBRUARY 19-27, 2000

A spirit of discovery and change turned the southern French city of Avignon into a crossroads of contemporary dance as the millennium edition of the Hivernales Dance Festival welcomed young companies emanating from nine different European countries.

This picturesque city known for its Papal Palace and Renaissance walls hosted dancers from France, Norway, Italy, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Iceland, Finland and Poland in this, the first edition of a traveling festival, Trans-Danse Europe 2000, initiated by Hivernales founder Amelie Grand.

Under the gothic arches of the Penitent Blanc cathedral/theater, the Silesian Dance Theater, Poland's only contemporary dance company, opened the festival with Notes from a Briefcase, a lively piece that highlighted the flexibility and diversity of the dancers, choreographed by Jacek Luminski.

The festival moved on to Prague with one of the week's most unforgettable discoveries, the world premiere of Gates by 30-year-old choreographer Jan Kodet for his company, the Company Bohemia Family Project. It's the second creation of this former assistant to Portuguese choreographer Rui Horta. This dark and humorous piece is a rich study of contrasts for five dancers, resulting from Kodet's three-week residency in the studios of Avignon.

Humor was a vital element of Belgian Fatou Traore's Passages, a fast-paced blend of hip-hop and improvisation with six dancers who performed alongside a ten-member live jazz orchestra led by Kris Defoort. The piece was a fantastic exploration of movement that zigzagged across the stage at a dizzying pace reminiscent of a busy city street intersection.

Many young companies in Europe are exploring the relation between theater and dance, often combining the two in abstract yet topical productions.

Hans Van Der Broeck, a former psychology student from Flemish-speaking Belgium, kept a standing-room-only crowd chuckling in La Sortie (Exit) with ricocheting Ping-Pong balls, a dancing Batman and a bloody Wild West parody. The laughter subsided, however, when the piece's final cathartic scene turned into a deadly birthday celebration.

France will be represented throughout the Trans-Danse Europe tour with the southern French company Kubilai Khan Investigations, a young and eclectic group of eight artists (French, Japanese and Czech) who break, dance, run, shout, talk and jump rope in S.O.Y., their second creation. Violinist Takumi Fukushima is unforgettable as she plays and screams like Yoko Ono, while Dimitri Jourde, trained at the national circus school, leaves the audience breathless with his daring break-dance moves to the electronic techno groove of Rui Owada.

After Avignon, the Trans-Danse Europe Festival will travel to Bergen, Prague, Bologna, Brussels and Helsinki before winding up in Reykjavik in November.