Outside of room for 200 in the Vrijstaat O cultural centre and the massive kursaal – more appropriate for Broadway shows than the intimacy of dance – the coastal city has nothing in the way of stages. When Vrijstaat O wanted to launch a contemporary dance festival, they didn’t know quite where to turn. Finally, they turned to the horizon.

The beach, they thought, will be our stage. Endless space, completely free and certainly no scheduling conflicts.

To avoid dancers getting their feet all wet, they located the festival site far up the sand, close to the city’s signature portico called the Royal Galleries. And to make it slightly less cruel, they put a platform on the beach so the artists wouldn’t faint of exhaustion trying to dance in deep sand. (They sprinkled sand on the makeshift stage, though, just for good measure.)

Audiences sit on a grandstand facing the dancers, the sea and, in some cases, the setting sun.

They hired Katleen Van Langendonck of Brussels’ Kaaitheater to curate, and she soon discovered that no dance troupe in the country wanted to say no. And though this year you’ll find Antwerp’s Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and his company Eastman on the bill, it’s mostly a Brussels show. “If you want to do something with contemporary dance in Belgium – or even in Europe – you always go through Brussels,” says Pieter Koten of Vrijstaat O. “Brussels and Berlin are the most important cities on the international dance scene.”

And the largest city on the Belgian coast specifically wanted to bring Brussels to town. “There’s a historical link between the two cities,” explains Koten. “Ostend was once called Bruxelles plage.”

Some choreographers at Dansand! adapt existing performances to the location, but some create brand new, site-specific work for the festival. In those cases, you may never see the works in their original formats ever again. Therefore, it would be advisable to grab tickets to the wanton display that is wildman choreographer Ivo Dimchev’s We.Art.Dog.Come. The Bulgarian created the piece in Brussels especially to premiere at Dansand! He dances it himself, accompanied by eight dolls, two friends and a dog.

Similarly, Cherkaoui, one of the great stars of Belgian dance, premieres his latest piece, Rein, in which he explores the effect of psychological clarity on the body through two Norwegian dancers. That shows with his previous work Faun.

Other highlights include Brusselsbased German choreographer Arco Renz with his P.O.P.E.R.A., where opera meets modern dance, and Flemish choreographer Wim Vandekeybus with his troupe Ultima Vez, who present the closing performance of the week, the site-specific What’s the Prediction? Although it’s perhaps not the most convenient time – on a Sunday night – anyone who knows Belgian dance knows this is one not to miss.

Most of those performances take place shaded from public view and require tickets. But many Dansand! performances are free, including the especially intriguing The Long Piece, by Les Ballet C de la B’s Christine De Smedt and Mette Edvardsen, in which 60 volunteers perform along the coastline for six hours, from low tide to high.

There will also be performances in the Galleries, as well as surprise spots around the city and a photo exhibition. “So if you are in Ostend, you will be confronted by contemporary dance,” says Koten. “Whether you like it or not.”

1-4 July
Along the coast of Ostend
www.vrijstaat-o.be