The highlight comes Monday, Jan. 22, with the Czech premiere of both the Entre Pasos dance company and its work No Trafico. The piece is a tale of four individuals waiting for a bus that never comes, using movement to show the deconstruction and dissolution of time and space during the endless waiting. No Trafico features Czech dancer Pavlina Černá, who also co-choreographed the piece.

On Wednesday, Jan. 24, Ponec welcomes two returning popular performances, the solos Cocoon Invisible and Mass. The first for a female dancer and the second for a male, Cocoon Invisible and Mass each explore gender and humanity roles through individual performances. The solos were choreographed by the husband-and-wife team of Milan Kozánek and Zuzana Kozánková, and will be danced by the performers who brought the solos to life at their debut last year, Jaro Viňarský and Veronika Simková.

Finally, the month will close with another premiere. Slovak choreographer Anton Lachký has set his new piece Heaven is the place... on dancers from the Dot 504 company, who performed it as a work in progress at Ponec in December. The final creation will be presented Jan. 30 and 31.

Lachký, a dancer with the London-based Akram Khan Company, choreographed Heaven is the place... as an analysis of physical impulses combined with musicality. It will be paired with Czech dancer and choreographer Kristýna Celbová's AriaD.N.A., a trio about ancient instincts and desires.

All of which adds up to an extraordinary devotion to contemporary dance. "Divadlo Ponec is basically modern dance and movement," explains Tanec Praha press spokeswoman Barbora Čermáková. "The basic aim is to provide [opportunities for] young or new dancers, and to develop dance in the Czech Republic."

Divadlo Ponec is one of two primary focuses of Tanec Praha; the other is an annual contemporary dance festival of the same name, now in its 20th year. One of the highlights of the Tanec Praha festival is the annual Sazka Award for "best dance newcomer." Two of January's featured performers — Viňarský and Celbová — are past Sazka Award winners.

"For dance-school graduates, Ponec will become a takeoff platform," says Yvona Kreuzmannova, director of the Tanec Praha civic association. "We know how difficult it is to start, and we also know that a young artist needs to be provided with creative possibilities to be able to further develop his or her talent."

That mission does not always translate into a full house, Čermáková admits, as contemporary dance is still finding a solid foothold in Prague.

"I don't think that the type of dance performed on our stage is a popular realm here in the Czech Republic," she says. "We're helping people to get to know that modern and other alternative forms of dance exist.

"People don't know much about this artistic domain, so we're trying to make them come," she adds. "It's hard work."