Medieval meets modern: December Dance in Bruges

If there's one event modern dance aficionados shouldn't miss this winter, Bruges' December Dance is it.

Making use of the picture-perfect medieval city's best venues, the festival coincides with the Brugge Centraal culture-fest and offers an enticing mix of old favourites and new works.

This is the fourth instalment of the festival – itself a collaboration between Bruges' Concertgebow and Cultuurcentrum – and it's been curated by Yugoslavian-born French choreographer Josef Nadj and German choreographer Sasha Waltz, who have created a programme focused on Central Europe.

The festival opened on 1 December with 4 Elements - 4 Seasons, a fascinating choreographic concert that sees dancer/choreographer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola team up with violinists Midori Seiler and Ariadne Daskalakis and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin - who all play vital roles on stage - to perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Jean-Féry Rebel's The Elements.

On 3 December, Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola returned with Joanna Dudley and a host of toy instruments in relationship drama My Dearest, My Fairest; a theme also explored the following day by Zsuzsa Rózsavölgyi and Tamás Bakó in Falling8.

Ticket-holders will also be able to catch the latest instalment of Josef Najd and saxophonist Akosh S's collaboration Les Corbeaux and young Serbian choreographer Saša Asentic's My Private Biopolitics, while Sasha Waltz's own Impromptus - a 'subdued, romantic and melancholic' piece for seven dancers set to Franz Schubert's eponymous piano cycle - is a must-see.

Charming comic relief comes courtesy of Les Slovaks' Journey Home, inspired by both Laurel & Hardy and Charlie Chaplin, before December Dance concludes on 12 December with Öper Öpis; a collaboration between DJ/composer Dimitri de Perrot and 'movement artist' Martin Zimmerman that explores the relationship between movement, music and scenography on a tilting stage. Both will have even the youngest audience members hooked.

Emma Lundin is a freelance travel journalist, broadcaster and writer.