Estonian contemporary dance seemed to appear from nowhere just like the Goddess Athena who jumped out of her father Zeus's head. It is more than doubtful that those who welcomed the birth of the Nordic Star Dance Theatre in September 1991, barely a month after Estonia had declared her re-independence, could foresee that the company's first program of American post-modern choreography would mark the birth of a new phenomenon.

Of course it did not start from the zero. There had been a blooming tradition of the so-called free dance in the inter-war period, and even though the Soviet regime suppressed this 'bourgeois residue', it never succeeded to root out the spirit of experimentation in movement. The later years of the Gorbachev era, which witnessed the explosion of cultural contacts with the West, brought novel ideas to dance as well. The Days of Contemporary Choreography organised by the National Opera Theatre 'Estonia' showed avant-garde pieces by Soviet dance makers and arranged modern and jazz dance classes, preparing ground for new notions of movement and body. Some of the ballet dancers, wishing to escape the rigidity of state theatre, and encouraged by the entrepreneurial spirit of the times, ventured to form a new company.

However, the price of independence both for the country and for the artistic circles proved to be more costly than expected, causing most of the dancers to return to the security in the theatre. However, before the Nordic Star ceased to exist it had given birth to another dance company - Fine 5 Dance Theatre that has been active since 1992. This company, headed by René Nõmmik and Tiina Ollesk, has been the flagship of Estonian contemporary dance in multiple ways: its studio has provided steady education for dance-oriented youngsters, its search for new ways of movement and shift from 'pure dance' to dance theatre has set a standard that younger choreographers have challenged and often rebelled against, thus adding an extra stimulus to the growth of dance.

The development of contemporary dance in Estonia was further impelled by two factors. First, there were journalists who by their writing kept the undertakings of this dance form in the consciousness of the public. Second important factor was the foundation of TIKE (Centre of Dance Information in Estonia) by Priit Raud and Heili Einasto, which organised various events focused on contemporary dance. In collaboration with the American Dance Festival fortnight classes of dance technique and composition were taught by the US prominent modern dance figures and these paved way to TIKE summer schools taking place within the framework of TIKE-organised contemporary dance festivals. In the late 1990s TIKE re-organised itself into 2. tants Dance Agency that in addition to dance-related activities is promoting collaboration of different arts. Their headquarters on the premises of the Kanuti Guild is a meeting place for choreographers, musicians, video and installation artists and filmmakers.

Fine 5 Dance Theatre has been experimenting with movement and in recent years how to combine movement with video, but their approach to dance venues and performance format has been rather conventional. It was Box RM Dance Company, growing out of Viljandi Cultural College student team in the mid-1990s that ventured out into non-traditional dance venues and developed movement out of a specific site. Besides using a black-box theatre their performances took place in half-completed and abandoned buildings, cinema entrance halls and streets. Most of their works were collaborative pieces in which all participants were also choreographers, thus introducing less hierarchical ways of composing dancing. When the company disbanded after five active years, two of their members, Merle Saarva and Raido Mägi continued in the field of improvisation and contact improvisation, and together with Mart Kangro and Krõõt Juurak have given purely improvisational performances, often in collaboration with musicians.

The door to greater freedom was now open. The United Dancers of Zuga have carried the trend of non-conventional dance venues on by having more or less improvisational performances in streets, railway stations, parks, attics. They have also placed greater emphasis on pedestrian movement and everyday gestures without noticeable stylisation for which they have been criticised as amateurs and 'common people from the street'. Their approach to movement and performance has been influenced by Thomas Lehmenn and Xavier Le Roy who both have performed in Estonia and used Estonian dancers in their pieces. Their ideas of 'less is more' in movement have encouraged the trend of the so-called conceptual dance focusing on the concepts of performance and dance in themselves.

photo: fine 5 dance theatre

By the end of the 1990s several Estonian choreographers have been asked to perform and work as resident choreographers by prestigious Western institutions such as KulturKontakt and ImpulsTanz in Austria, TanzNacht Berlin in Germany, Dance Umbrella in Great Britain, to name but a few, forcing Estonian cultural institutions to pay attention to this art from as well. Thus the annual Theatre Union 'ballet award' has been renamed 'dance theatre award', and one of the great supporters of Estonian dance Philip Morris has shifted its interest from ballet to contemporary dance. Another remarkable tendency is in bringing movement into the world of drama, impelled partly by the Moscow choreographer Sasha Pepelyayev whose fame in the Western world was launched in the TIKE organised regional platform of the Bagnolet' dance competition. Pepelyayev has always choreographed theatrical dance pieces in which movement plays an important but not a single role, and his productions in Estonian theatre have won international acclaim. Thus the field of theatre has begun to take a greater interest in the activities of contemporary dance.

And there are more activities than one can follow. At the beginning of the 1990s it was relatively easy to get an overview of the field for there were only some permanent companies and one or two festivals, whereas at present there are individuals and groups active at international, national and local levels, and the same applies to events. Besides performances all over Estonia there are several festivals in which contemporary dance has a prominent place.

2. tants organises two annual festivals, one in spring and the other in August. There is Noor Tants (Young Dance) emphasising improvisation and creativity in dance in Viljandi, I.D.A. Dance Festival that includes ballet in Tartu, and Koolitants (School Dance) competition for pupils with a category of contemporary dance, forming a springboard for further dance evolution. In addition to all this, various drama and music festivals include dance pieces and commission works by contemporary choreographers. And what is noteworthy in Estonian context - contemporary dance has caught the attention of men. Estonian dance has in general been largely a female-dominated field: even the majority of our leading ballet choreographers and company directors have been women (rather unique in Western context); contemporary dance, on the other hand, has been opened new horizons for Estonian males. This more balanced gender division provides a fertile ground for the further development of contemporary dance in Estonia.

Post-Soviet culture has eagerly turned to the West as if to compensate for the lost decades; this is also true in the evolution of contemporary dance in Estonia. If at the beginning the American influence was predominant with the development of movement as such, then since Estonia's accession to the European Union German and Dutch tendencies with a strong emphasis on performance and the use of different media has gained a strong footing. The only Eastern influence is represented by Sasha Pepelyayev's dance theatre in which Russian culture is blended with Western trends. There has been little interest in ethnic material so far - perhaps because folk dance, principally known via its staged form has been associated with a strictly fixed form offering no freedom of expression. Thus contemporary dance in Estonia represents an urban, even metropolitan attitude in which individuality, personality and original expression are highly valued, identity is fluid and changeable, and loyalties are dependent on ideas and not one's place of origin.

Heili Einasto (b 1965) has written dance criticism since 1991 and analysed Estonian contemporary dance at various FIRT conferences since 1998. Presently she is lecturing at Tallinn University and Viljandi Cultural Academy of the University of Tartu.