What should you expect from the contemporary dance offerings of a Fringe Festival? Would you agree that the work should be a bit raw, edgy, provocative, and undoubtedly multi- or cross-disciplinary? And that it may even be hard to categorize as dance except that you should find movement at the core - rather than text, or clowning, or music? But you might say that the movement may not be what you think of as dance - steps, combinations, a formality of line. Rather, it might be messy, pedestrian, gestural. Will the Dublin Fringe Festival 2008's dance series, In Motion, match these expectations?

Well, the work of the Americans I know - Jess Curtis' work for Croí Glan and the two solo adaptations of Deborah Hay's work by Emma Fitzgerald and Julie Lockett - certainly should, but in less obvious ways. Curtis will here collaborate with Tara Brandel and Rhona Coughlan, giving them the chance to explore their own and each others' bodies. Like girl jonah, who performed in the 2008 Dublin Dance Festival, these two very different dancers, one a wheelchair user, will interweave their personal movement vocabularies with bits of narrative. Curtis comes from the (in)famous San Francisco collective Contraband, worked with a French nouvelle cirque company, and now lives between San Francisco and Berlin. His experience in aerial work might well be a component of Assymetrical Tendencies

Deborah Hay poses impossible problems to solve, e.g, "what if every cell in my body had the potential to realise the uniqueness and originality of time?" Or, "what if every cell in my body were moving in a different direction?" Her work is created - in both solo and group configurations - around these imaginative puzzles. How each choreographer/dancer responds to such conundrums is the genesis of the creation of the work. Coached by Hay, there is ample room for individuality but each dancer must practice her/his piece every day for at least 30 days before Deborah will sanction its performance. A Judson-era pioneer who worked away almost hermetically in Austin, TX since 1976 renowned only among a small circle of dancers, Deborah Hay's recent work has garnered significant attention, has been supported in France by the National Choreographic Centre in Angers and in Germany by The Forsythe Company, and is touring widely. The double bill of Hay's work in the Fringe (Solo Adaptations: The Ridge / The Runner) is performed by Emma Fitzgerald and Julie Lockett.

The ever delightful junk ensemble will examine dereliction and abandon in a site-specific work to be presented in a warehouse. Entitled Drinking Dust. the Kennedy sisters will collaborate with two theatre directors (Brokentalkers) and plan to incorporate interactive elements. Megan Kennedy will also take part in A Distinct Glimpse, a collaboration with choreographer Gavin Kostick (winner of the 2007 Spirit of the Fringe Award), composer Natasha Lohan, and designer Aedin Cosgrove that promises a "storming piece of dance."

Embedded in the Fringe's dance triple bill, Norwegian choreographer Henrik Kallund, in a solo for Anne Schmidt, attacks the issue of finding one's identity under the constant bombardment of the media. The work intends to use rapidly changing lights to highlight the potential of rapid changes of persona.

Barcelona choreographers Germana Civera and Jordi Cortes will create The Forest, described as dark, primeval, Shakespearean. Civera, who is also based part of the year in the south of France, had a recent work, Fuero(n), presented at Montpellier Danse. Cortes worked in London with DV8 and Wendy Houstoun, and is an accomplished dancer/actor.

Rounding off the triple bill is Mark Riebort, who studied boat building and dance in Norway, as HE tries to figure out how he ended up here.

A programme of two double bills of Scottish dance will include Mobile, a work exploring possibilities for movement with crutches, investigating choice and denial by Claire Cunningham. Also on this varied bill are Danceihayami, a company that incorporates the Bharata Natyam form of classical Indian dance with Celtic music, and Collette Sadler's The Making of Doubt.

Working with musician Emily Aoibheann, Deirdre Murphy's Wax Hands, as part of the Fringe's celebratory Day of Dance in DanceHouse will investigate the boundary between life and death, imagining the freedom of a weightless, bodiless state.

These amazing descriptions, coming from the dance artists in the Fringe, lead me to add and, indeed stress, that beyond the expectations outlined in the first paragraph above, a most important consideration cannot be overlooked. These choreographers are working rigorously and with considerable discipline to create such pieces. They may stretch your definitions of dance but they are serious investigations into movement and/or into issues of consequence in today's world.

Laurie Uprichard is Artistic Director of the Dublin Dance Festival