Dance Theatre of Ireland is kicking off its tenth anniversary year with Made to Measure, a double-bill by the celebrated Portuguese choreographer, Rui Horta. The dancers have been negotiating his fractured movement style with knee pads on their portable floor in Knox Hall in the Dublin suburb of Monkstown, folded bridge tables stacked temporarily to the side.

Commissioning work from international choreographers - such as Blok and Steel from the Netherlands, and Dominique Bagouet of France, whose Jours Etranges they perform in Paris again next month - is part of DTI's policy. "We need that inspiration because we work so much in isolation. There is a lot of amazing work out there which will never come here," says DTI artistic director Loretta Yurick.

This production is the fruition of a project initiated more than two years ago when Yurick and fellow artistic director Robert Connor travelled to Germany to see Horta's Glass - Short Stories of Fools. They felt an instant affinity with his "visceral, passionate, physical" style - "the language we love - the people are people, the dancers are virile". Serendipitously, just at that moment Horta, who has choreographed with the Cullberg Ballet, Lisbon Dance Company, and the Gulbenkian Ballet, among others, was working independently again after five years with Frankfurt's S.O.A.P. Dance Theatre, and was free to accept DTI's invitation.

For the DTI's production, Horta's Made to Measure (1992) has been entrusted into the hands of his assistant, Anton Skrzypiciel, (pronounced skrepeetsiel) who has danced in the works himself many times in the past. In an earlier Horta work, Object Constant (1994) Skrzypiciel, a tall, blond Australian of Polish extraction, played the part of a ringmaster and surrogate choreographer - which now seems to have transferred into reality.

This long-time Horta collaborator refers to his job in Ireland with the six hand-picked dancers (Robert Connor, DTI stalwarts J.J. Formento and Muirne Bloomer, plus Olwen Grindley, and Germans Erich Rudolf and Stefano Botto) as "a very megalomaniac process". Like a football coach, he has "pushed them very hard - they learned it all in about two and a half weeks". They are "just starting to own the work", he tells me as we snatch a cup of tea before a taxi comes to take him to the airport, en route to Japan to perform Horta's first independent solo, Bones and Oceans. Horta's propensity to mine the individuality of his dancers' personalities, who tend to be "more mature" - over 30 - stems interestingly from the fact that he "looks for trouble", in his dancers, who "have got something to say about the world".

"There is a gravity about people who have been through things," says Skrzypiciel. "Horta expects a lot from you." This makes Horta's practice of transferring choreographies to different companies (Made to Measure is in rep in Munich, Dortmund, Reykjavik, and Lisbon) seem a little contradictory. But Skrzyplciel counters: "It is great that works just don't disappear. We live in a very disposable age, and contemporary dance is one of the most disposable artforms."

Skrzypiciel returns from Japan for DTI's premiere in Kilkenny on Saturday, which includes a short distillation of Bones and Oceans, christened Pocket Ocean - a bonus solo performed by Grindley. You can almost sense Skrzypiciel, who double-jobs as a diving teacher in Malaysia, carrying a pocket ocean wherever he goes. And Horta's work is drenched, literally, in water: "Water, aquariums, fish tanks on stage, or television monitors with fish swimming in them, have always been in his work." In Khora (1996) "we had ice in aquariums on overhead projectors - the overheads shining through ice, which melts under the lamps", Skrzypiciel says. This is tied in with a wistful notion of nationality, and emigration: "The Portuguese have this tradition of fado," (he ululates a few bars) "- whining about the world, and loving it - a kind of sad passion." As an Australian, he naturally identifies with this: "Horta and I both miss the ocean, we both miss the water. I think that is why it is in his work, that longing - people away from the ocean miss it terribly, there is always something lacking." Especially in a city such as Frankfurt, where the group was based for five years: "The sluggish Main runs through it - this narrow, brown thing."

But he quickly balances this "little bit of sadness, the missing of people who went away and never came back", with "the element of going out into the world. People are very curious as well, to see `What happens if I don't stay? What happens if I put these two incongruous kinds of movements together?' "

Reflected metaphorically in Horta's fractured style - "the way he changes qualities and energies - he is a little bit schizophrenic sometimes, and never just lets a movement flow along" - is his penchant for "things that break, a disjointed quality - which comes from thinking about the disjointed nature of the lives we lead. That breaking up of old ideas, old notions of being in one place. Without saying `this is how I want the world to be', but `this is how I see the world at this moment and let us examine ourselves in these situations'." Made to Measure is a good indication of Horta's love of movement - "unlike a lot of choreographers who are saying that they are not interested in movement any more . . . people's physicality is important - no matter what goes on with technical ideas, and multi-media. Horta wants to see people on stage, not machines."

Horta's architectural background (he trained in architecture and physical education in Lisbon), peeks out from all corners of his work: "He looks at things very architecturally, and designs his own lighting. It is often very sculptural, with clear lines," says Skrzypiciel.

This is particularly evident in Ordinary Events, the second of the double bill, which is "very linear, and very architectonic in the way people move and the shapes they make," performed to the driving score of Tambours de Bronx, a renowned French drumming group comprising 40 unemployed people on oil drums. "It is not a trendy work. Rui is here for the long run. He will be making work in 20 years' time in one shape or another," says Skrzypiciel.

The arrival of the taxi unleashes a chorus of good-byes, last words of advice such as "keep changing!" A flurry of hugs and kisses, "au revoir", "we love you!", and then someone thinks of taking Skrzypiciel's mobile number in Japan. In his wake the dancers move into the hall for their warmup class to music such as Alanis Morissette, followed by the first post-Skrzypiciel run-through, which begins with the first work in the double-bill, Wolfgang Bitte . . . that daunting commission about "any aspect of Mozart".

Focused on pieces composed in the final year of Mozart's life - The Magic Flute, Requiem, and a surprising, crackling recording of The Linz Concert (a wedding composition created in six days, which plays quietly on an old record player throughout) - Horta's choreography conveys a sense of all the prodding and tugging at the musical prodigy throughout his life.

Loretta Yurick, who has been diligently taking notes, muses on the "vulnerable, lonely, pathetic life he led". But the choreography is rapid and precise - "not in the way you would make a funeral to Requiem. Rui wasn't kidding when he said `Mozart worked like us. He didn't know where his next dime was coming from.' Dancers can really relate to that. They give everything when they dance" - material which could, indeed, have been made to measure to celebrate a decade of DTI.

Made To Measure, a double bill comprising Wolfgang, bitte . . . and Ordinary Events opens at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny on Saturday, and tours to the Firkin Crane, Cork, Town Hall Theatre, Galway and the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin. Booking on 01-2803455