Although the Philadelphia dance community has begun to gain national recognition, it remains largely undervalued here at home--due primarily to a lack of visibility, little promotion and no permanent space for companies.

But from Jan. 21 through Feb. 8, several of the city's top dance companies will be performing on alternate nights as part of the third annual DanceBoom! festival at the Wilma Theater.

Curated by Nick Stuccio (the co-founder and producing director of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival), DanceBoom! is (along with the Fringe) one of the few opportunities for the area's dance companies to reach a wide audience.

This year the event has a decidedly Eastern flavor. There's the appearance of the Philadelphia Chinese Opera Society, Group Motion Dance Company's new Direction of Harmonization with Tokyo's Dance Theatre 21, and You Are So Beautiful, a collaboration between Philadelphia's Bessie Award-winning Headlong Dance Theater and Arrow Dance Communication of Kyoto, Japan.

After meeting at the Japan-U.S. Dance Exchange in 2002, Headlong co-director Andrew Simonet says he and fellow co-directors David Brick and Amy Smith felt a connection with Arrow that was "fucking eerie." So the companies decided to enter into a full collaboration--the first for Headlong with another dance company.

Simonet describes the relationship between the two companies as being like "long-lost siblings. More than any other company we've ever met, we have a muscular kinship with them."

While rehearsing in Japan for Beautiful's Kyoto world premiere, Simonet says the companies connected by performing together in rehearsal.

"I'm struck by the chasm between the performative moments of rehearsal and the structural/intellectual moments," Simonet says. He further explains this difference as that between "having sex and discussing it. It's just not the same thing."

Describing this ability to relate on a physical level as "one of the great gifts that contemporary dance has to offer," Simonet portrays the companies' physical relationship as being "utterly comfortable and deeply challenging."

Initially focusing on karaoke to explore the parallels between Japanese and American culture, You Are So Beautiful ultimately became about the two companies' interaction together as rehearsals progressed.

Unlike more recent Headlong efforts such as St*r W*rs, The Story of a Panic and Britney's Inferno, all of which were based on a central theme, Simonet says the less structured and story-based Beautiful is more of an "experiential travelogue" with an openness and intuitiveness that has made developing the work both thrilling and a little frightening.

Simonet's ideas for a more specific throughline were universally derided by the show's other seven members, but Beautiful has retained what he calls a "strange logic" that makes directing the work like "composing a score for a film that doesn't exist yet."

Because of Headlong's intimate experience with Arrow, Simonet now calls the dance "an orgy of encounters [and] a suite of intersections."

Although Simonet says some of Headlong's early work was inspired by the performers' personalities and idiosyncrasies, he describes the absence of a "big idea" in Beautiful as something of a departure.

Instead of portraying characters in a story, the performers play "aspects and dilations" of themselves. The result is a more personal piece that moves away from the theatrical structure of Headlong's latest productions.

What does remain is the company's appealing sense of humor, especially in the scenes where the performers from Headlong and Arrow struggle to overcome the language barrier--which Simonet says caused a number of riotous misunderstandings in rehearsal.

Because Beautiful is inspired by the two companies' experiences working together, it's perhaps more personal than St*r W*rs or Britney's Inferno. Still, Simonet stresses that the piece is not at all confessional.

One of Headlong's goals is to produce contemporary dance that can be enjoyed and understood by a large audience--and Beautiful retains that sense of accessibility.

"Preaching to the converted gets old quick," Simonet says. "With modern dance, you have the advantage of [new audiences] expecting to hate it. So if you can connect to them at all, they're ready to have their minds blown. And the Wilma's audience is pretty bold. They have that we-like-art thing that makes them less apt to insist on being passively entertained in a familiar way. So this strange and lovely piece is perfect for them."