Spring Dance: Enigma &Like a Star & CaDanceStore Carl

Pasteursvej 20, 1778 Cph V; performances at 20:00 on Thursday and  Feb 12, at 15:00 on Feb 13; tickets: 210kr, under-25s 135kr; 90 mins including intermission; 3539 8787; www.danskdanseteater.dk

Contemporary dance: abandoning convention and tradition, it stimulates hidden depths behind the façade we choose to show the world.

The process can meet with some resistance. We are not accustomed to having our secrets probed. We are uncomfortable with taboo subjects being aired in public. We prefer to stick rigidly to norms and traditions, and to do things the way they’ve always been done.

If we allow ourselves to be tempted out of these comfort zones, we might cautiously discover a rich, new world of emotion and expression. This is the goal of Tim Rushton, choreographer and artistic director of Dansk Danseteater, one of the foremost contemporary dance companies in Scandinavia.

The dancers - who, in close collaboration with Rushton, guide us on this expedition - are a multi-national team in huge demand all over the world. Their seemingly effortless distensions of the normal boundaries of style and technique, and the emotional nuances they exude, lead the audience into the feelings behind the scenes they are depicting.

If you are a fan of Sommerballet, this will all be quite familiar to you. Rushton has been delighting audiences in Denmark with his contemporary creations for many years, and in 2009 Dansk Danseteater was awarded the prestigious Reumert prize for their production Labyrinth.

Each show has its own, unique signature. Rushton’s aim is to transport the audience from a rigid, goal-orientated state into an emotional one, where they can free their repressed emotions and enjoy some space in which to acknowledge and savour them.

Enigma’s choreography is inspired by Bach, with his six unaccompanied cello suites as its musical base. Jakob Kullberg plays the cello, and the accompanying electronic soundscape is composed by Mathias Friis-Hansen. The dancers seek meaning in signs, numbers and symbols.

The humoristic Like a Star, choreographed by the popular Adi Salant, was inspired by emotions stimulated by the World Press Exhibition in Copenhagen late last year. She was impressed by the outer overstatement of the images, which she experienced to be offset by their more subtle, hidden messages. The dance is an exploration of love.

CaDance is set to a minimalist, percussive composition by Andy Pape. The two live percussionists and the male dancers play with a clockwork rhythm, going in and out of unison, superseding and startling one another. The movements of the dancers’ bodies resemble those of drum sticks, and the initial domination of the music leads up to the dancers’ virtuoso climax - the dance expressing a range of emotion from brutal conflict through to tenderness.

Dansk Danseteater not only enthralls local audiences; they also tour internationally. They have performed at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the USA, and at the Sydney Opera House. Their aim is to give audiences an experience out of the ordinary and to challenge both the traditional and the contemporary dance worlds.

In November 2009 they established their base at DANSEhallerne, the old Carlsberg mineral water bottling factory in Vesterbro, now northern Europe’s largest modern dance centre. Aside from the information centre, offices and rehearsal areas, there are two stages: Store (Large) Carl, and Lille (Small) Carl. The centre for contemporary dance and closely related performance art, Dansens Hus, is also housed here. New entrants to the world of dance therefore get to work in close proximity to their more experienced colleagues.

Torben Glarbo has created an hour-long documentary film, Decoding, about the seven-month-long process of creating Enigma. The film will be shown at Store Carl on 12 February at 18:00, and can be followed by a sandwich before the start of Spring Dance. Tickets for both can be purchased from Billetnet. The film will subsequently be available for purchase from Dansk Danseteater.

Spring is almost upon us – and an emotionally liberating evening of Spring Dance could be a good way to welcome the season of new life.