Yes, having smashed up the boundaries of stage performance, having shocked, intrigued and delighted at international festivals the world over, Flemish choreographers and theatre-makers have been granted a historical distinction. Through a ground-breaking fusion of dance, theatre, performance art, music and literature, the group of artists belonging to the “Flemish Wave” re-invented their genres in the 1970s and ’80s to world-wide curiosity.

This is perhaps made no clearer right now in Flanders than by Vandekeybus, evidenced once again in his latest production, nieuwZwart. His work cannot be called dance, nor theatre – it’s both, and in so being, it’s neither. Together with Flemish artist Jan Fabre, he has led modern dance in Europe into completely new territory.

Vandekeybus, 46, in fact danced with Fabre’s company in the mid-1980s. “He was a kind of mentor, you could say,” Vandekeybus tells me. And yet he absorbed this first performance experience without remotely imitating it. “If I had had more mentors, I would not make the work I make; it would be similar to other things.”

And Vandeykeybus’ work isn’t similar to anything. He debuted in 1987 with What the Body Does Not Remember, an energetic – and slightly unnerving – piece in which dancers walk across bricks lined on the floor, before throwing them past other quickly moving dancers with razor-sharp precision. More danger awaited when they dropped darts between each other’s feet and threw themselves into thin air, hoping the dancer coming from seemingly much-too-far away, catches them before they hit the ground. It was an exhilarating circus-cum-dance performance that won New York’s prestigious Bessie Award and solidified Vandekeybus’ relationship with Ultima Vez.

He found the young group of unpractised dancers in Madrid in 1986, and none of them ever looked back. He brought them to Brussels, where they are still based on Koolmijnenkaai along the canal in Molenbeek. Together, they have created a new show every year that has infused an industrial kind of cool to the discipline, seducing the critics and bringing in younger audiences.

Dancers climb chains, cling to aerial chairs, swing from the rooftops or become trapped in webs of cables, when they’re not bashing into each other or throwing themselves to the floor. The group’s sheer athleticism is as inspiring (and famous) as the story they are telling. The dancers’ interactions with the audience can be playful – or sometime feels as wicked as their encounters with each other.

“It’s like with cinema,” Vandekeybus says. “You film something that is sentient, that is its own thing – but it’s what you do with it that makes it your thing. It can be very surrealistic. I like the fantasy and the ability of people to enter into another role, an animal or the characteristic of fire. You have the fire in you, and people can understand what fire is.”

From the beginning, Vandekeybus collaborated closely with musicians, particularly composer Peter Vermeersch of the band Flat Earth Society. Music is usually played live right on the stage, part of the performance rather than behind it. (In nieuwZwart, the musicians are on a platform that swings precariously above the stage.) The music itself can dictate the movements – or vice versa. He also incorporates short films, mostly that he directs himself, into the performance – or sometimes pure costume theatre. The awards have rolled in – dance, theatre, music and film prizes.

Not bad for a guy with no formal training. After giving up psychology studies in Leuven, Vandekeybus pursued his interest in film and photography, eventually taking some theatre workshops and dance classes. But nothing was particularly a preparation for what he went on to create. “I had to start from scratch, in fact, from instinct, from physicality,” he says. “It was like an investigation, in the beginning. I had to develop a language – out of not knowing.”

nieuwZwart, which was on stage in Ostend’s Festival aan zee in August and opens for a three-week run in Brussels’ KVS this weekend, goes back to the beginning – the world’s beginning. Seven figures birth themselves and then spend the next 90 minutes trying to survive. A central character narrates a text by Flemish author Peter Verhelst, while Mauro Pawlowski of the Belgian rock band dEUS plays the music live.

“It’s not a lesson in how humans treat each other – all of the dancers are part of the same creature,” explains Vandekeybus. “The musicians are the heartbeat and the temperament, the dancers are the bones and the tendons and the skin. The narrator is the rational part who tries to explain the emotional state.”

He says that Pawlowski’s music “creates a feeling of the remembrance of the ritual of rebirth. It’s beyond realism and symbolism. It’s an emotional thing that is not like ‘Did you understand it?’ but more like ‘Did you feel it?’ ”

THE NEW BLACK

Wim Vandekeybus may be a victim of his own success. Last year, I visited KVS in Brussels for the revival of the choreographer’s Spiegel, a clever compilation of 20 years of work, and for the revival of his 2007 production Menske. Both were reminders of the awesome power of live performance that refuses to stick to any prescribed conventions.

I can easily say that I had never seen better dance in Belgium. But in the case of Menske, I can say that I have never seen better dance, period. Menske’s set and sound not only overwhelm all of your senses (including “touch” for some of the people in the front rows), the physical abilities of the dancers eventually seem nearly super-human. Australian actress and dancer Kylie Walters at one point (during a particular theatre-of-the-absurd moment) contorts her body to freakshow proportions. Between Walters trash-talking urban construction worker persona, a pulsating soundtrack by Flemish rock musician Daan and a set that alternated between the urban industrial complex and an underground Brussels network of tunnels, you are, by the end, practically exhausted. And irrevocably impressed.

nieuwZwart, or New Black, has all of the elements of Menske. Kylie Walters again plays the narrator and she again struts about the stage in high heels, powerfully beating against the large-scale strips of metal that hang loose from the ceiling. Again, dancers get in and out of each other’s way and shock the audience with their violent and courageous interactions.

The production begins with seven figures being born from under a huge, shiny space blanket that covers the entire stage. Figures in black come to explore these writhing creatures, wielding halogen flashlights and other sinister- looking devices. Walters delivers text written by Flemish author Peter Verhelst with an astonishing vocal power.

Mauro Pawlowski of the band dEUS composed the music for nieuwZwart and plays it live with two others musicians. Their small platform hangs from the ceiling, occasionally swinging a bit, especially when Walters climbs about on its underbelly maze of steel. It’s impossible to tell if the dancers are moving to the music or vice versa – so seamlessly a collaboration was this.

nieuwZwart is excellent, both technically and artistically. It’s an accomplished production for most choreographers. And yet I felt I had seen it before – and better.