A couple of months ago several catchy ads started popping up in newspapers, magazines, the internet and on billboards to promote one of this year's major cultural events in Bulgaria. Pictured in various dance postures, some of Sofia's most famous statues were chosen to popularise the first international festival of contemporary dance in Bulgaria - Sofia Dance Week - taking place from September 22 to 29.

Hoping to attract tens of thousands of spectators and to turn the festival into a prominent annual cultural event, organisers from Edno (One) magazine have managed to engage world class dance companies to the first festival. French Compagnie 111 and Centre choregraphique national de Grenoble Jean Claude Gallotta - Groupe Emile Dubois, Ciplak Аyaklar from Turkey together with France's C Dans C, Belgium's Ultima Vez and Italians Aterballetto will stage performances along with Bulgaria's own Arabesque Ballet and Kinesthetic Project.

Compagnie 111 - better known as CIE 111 - have been chosen to open Sofia Dance Week with their Plus ou Moins L'Infini (More or Less, Infinity) show, which is the final, third part of their trilogy about space - three shows inspired by key geometrical concepts.

While IJK focused on volume and space and Plan B on plain and perspective, Plus ou Moins L'Infini centres on the line. Created in 1999, CIE 111 was influenced by Oskar Schlemmer and the theatrical trends of the Bauhaus school and minimalism. As means of expression they use the applied arts of juggling and acrobatics, as well as music, dance, theatre, light, kinetics and optical illusions, among others. Their performances can be hard to describe because they are more of an exotic visual experience, a hybrid art allowing the audience to use its own imagination.

The second day of Sofia Dance Week will see Bulgarians from Kinesthetic Project (Violeta Vitanova and Stanislav Genadiev) stage their Imago and Void shows, which won them wide recognition as one of Bulgaria's most up and coming contemporary dance formations. Last year, Imago won Bulgaria's prestigious Icarus theatre award for the best debut. The jury's decision  to give the award to a dance project was unprecedented. Pure dance, naked bodies and bare stage are all part of Kinesthetic's performance, entirely open to the interpretation of the audience.

Next to perform will be Turkish dance company Ciplak Аyaklar and French C Dans C. They will present the Engin-Ar show, an urban show featuring a DJ, a sofa and eight young people entangled in relationships. Combining motion, theatre and video, Ciplak Аyaklar is considered a milestone of contemporary Turkish dance. 

Centre choregraphique national de Grenoble Jean Claude Gallotta - Groupe Emile Dubois, constantly experimenting with its own concepts of creative choreography, is known for its ability to transform dance into dialogue and improvise with ease both on international stages and festivals and on some unlikely venues such as village squares, libraries and foyers. During Sofia Dance Week, Jean Claude Gallotta will present two shows - L'Incessante and Sunset Fratell. L'Incessante is a solo performance by Mathilde Altaraz, co-founder of Emile Dubois Group along with Jean-Claude Gallotta, while Sunset Fratell is a two-hander that premiered in 2007.

Sofia Dance Week will also host Bulgaria's Arabesque Ballet performance of The Epiphany of the Stone in which statues come alive, the serious turns comic and vice versa and choreography is accompanied by text and video. Renowned dancers from 1986-founded Ultima Vez (Belgium) company will perform, on two consecutive nights, their instinctive, fiercely belligerent and outright dangerous hour-and-a-half Spiegel (Mirror) show, an emblematic scene involving the throwing of bricks on stage.

Finally, the festival will be closed by Italians from Aterballetto dance company, who will stage their Romeo and Juliet show, a different, avant-garde take on the classic love story. Romeo and Juliet are young people travelling with reckless speed towards each other, wearing helmets on their heads and protectors on their elbows. All the protective equipment, however, turns out to be useless against love, which devastates everything on its way and aims right at the heart. Romeo and Juliet are presented as three, six and even 10 couples who display aggressive behaviour towards each other, apart from during deeply gentle love moments, which resemble the classic ballet interpretation of this most famous love story.

Sofia Dance Week full programme:

September 22, 8.30pm, National Palace of Culture, Hall 1
Plus ou Moins L'infini (More or Less, Infinity)
Compagnie 111

September 23, 8pm, Sfumato Theatre - Laboratory
Imago; Void
Kinesthetic Project

September 24,  8pm, Sofia Theatre
Engin-ar
Ciplak Ayaklar & C Dans C

September 25, 8pm, Sofia Theatre
L'Incessante; Sunset Fratell
Centre choregraphique national de Grenoble Jean Claude Gallotta - Groupe Emile Dubois

September 26, 8pm, Sofia Theatre
The Epiphany of the Stone
Ballet Arabesque

September 27, 28, 8pm, Ivan Vazov National Theatre
Spiegel (Mirror)
Ultima Vez

September 29, 8pm, National Palace of Culture, Hall 1
Romeo and Juliet
Aterballetto

For more, go to the website of Sofia Dance Week.