Now in its 12th year, the Czech Dance Platform again presents a selection of contemporary dance work made during the last year in the Czech Republic. The event marks an important moment on the dance calendar, when the country's contemporary dance developments are presented to an international jury with participating artists being considered for the major Sazka Prize for "New Dance Talent of the Year."

Both the platform and the Sazka Award are strings in the formidable bow of Tanec Praha founder and Director Yvona Kreuzmannová, who has worked assiduously since the early 1990s to establish contemporary dance in the Czech Republic. She speaks proudly of the achievements of Czech dance artists in the past few years, both locally and abroad: "Their success is proof that even after 40 years of isolation from the development of modern dance in the world, we are able to quickly get back on track. We have brilliant interpreters and original ideas."

Several of this year's works and artists are already familiar to Prague audiences. But each year the field broadens to incorporate choreographers from more remote Czech regions and also (when they are working with Czech dancers) from abroad. These include Norwegian Karen Foss, who has made a work with the Prague-based, dancer-led ensemble Nanohach. Her Structures of Instability examines frailty as a human state.

The program also includes two former Sazka Prize winners, providing an opportunity to see again their excellent works, both of which make superb use of innovative new technology in terms of theatrical lighting and effects. Petra Hauerová's two pieces Turing Machine and Night Moth are exceptional productions, combining awe-inspiring laser and sound effects with a raw, expressionist energy. Her choreography is minimal, creating distorted shapes of human or android form glimpsed momentarily amidst a virtual landscape that is more contemporary nightmare, or computer game, than theater. The lighting, created by her collaborative team TOW, is remarkable, drawing laser lines across the space or bodies in red or green against a punishing, crackling soundtrack. The effects create a fearful, ever-changing half-world that leaves its inhabitants belittled and bewildered.

Unfettered by the strict health and safety laws of Western theater, Hauerová's work presents that precious rarity — a true theatrical blackout. Without exit lights to reduce the effect, Hauerová plunges her audiences into a velvety blackness and harangues them with earsplitting sound. She plays with real theatrical illusion, as distances become unreadable and disorienting, and figures loom or disappear in barely recognizable form.

For pure, beautiful dancing, it's also worth seeing last year's Sazka winners VerTeDance perform Beneath the Silence by Peter Mika and Olga Cobos. The work, made by two very experienced and world-class dancers, brings out the superb technical and expressive qualities of the young Czech duo, combining a languid lyricism and clarity of line with robust and dynamic physicality.

Former and current students of the Duncan Centre Conservatory will present short works in a combined program that showcases the school's focus on personal, expressive dance styles. Derived from the teachings of Isadora Duncan and her sister Elizabeth, who taught in this region at the beginning of the 20th century, the Duncan Centre is a powerful force in the development of contemporary dance in the Czech Republic, responsible for nurturing young dancer/choreographers of individuality and passion.