Jean Isaac’s San Diego Dance Theater, in partnership with the San Diego Museum of Art, presents its third annual Intimate Cabaret Dances Jan. 16-18. The program this year features two world premieres and the expansion of the popular “Suite Jeff” ensemble piece, which is set to the songs of the late cult favorite, singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley.

Presented in a cabaret style setting, with a no-host bar, light dinner, coffee and desserts, Intimate Cabaret Dances is a unique experience.

“It’s cabaret-style seating, so you’re not just an audience seeing a show,” explained Bradley Lundberg, one of the company’s dancers. “There are tables where you can sit with your friends, there’s food where you can get drinks and things like that. It’s a little bit more casual and makes the dance a little bit more accessible.… Especially for people who don’t see a lot of dance, it’s an easier way to come and see dance. It’s really much more of a creative and entertaining type of thing.”

Night and Day’s David Coddon said of last year’s Cabaret Dances that “the emotional impetus of the dances — making you laugh one minute and putting a lump in your throat another — is neither diminished nor eclipsed by its cabaret package.”

“Hunters” and “Unsquare Dances” are two new pieces that will premier in this year’s show. “Unsquare Dances,” performed to the fiddle music of local bluegrass band Gone Tomorrow, is a highly campy series of solos and duets, while “Hunters” toys with the notion of who is hunter, who is prey and what happens when you break off from the pack.

The remainder of the show is comprised of selections from Jean Isaac’s “Atlantic Man,” which uses non gender-specific partnering of dancers, and a variety of songs, skits and other acts that highlight the spirit of the pre World War II cabaret world. John Highkin, co-founder and former Fern Street Circus artistic director, sings traditional country and Kurt Weil favorites while playing the mandolin.

“The dances are just a variety of things that we’re working on now,” said Lundberg. “They’re not necessarily cabaret-themed, although some of the songs and bits between the dances are songs from Chicago, so I think [Isaac] is tying it in a bit that way. There are four dances connected with little vignettes with whatever talent the dancers have — for instance there’s someone twirling a baton, there’s people singing; they’re doing all kinds of things in between.”

Lundberg, who is in three of the four pieces in Intimate Cabaret Dances, described the method of developing SDDT performances as very collaborative, emphasizing dancers’ individual talents. For example, “Unsquare Dances” features solos by Lundberg and Dieterrle-Smith that lead into a duet, and was created for them by Isaac. The dancers in “Hunters” were allowed to contribute a lot of movement as the piece was being created, as were the dancers in “Atlantic Man,” an older piece that has a section incorporated into the show. “Jean works very much with the dancers.… You get to create a lot of your own material, which makes it a lot more fun,” Lundberg said.

Since joining SDDT last fall, Lundberg has performed in Trolley Dances, an annual company show that consists of eight site-specific dance performances along the San Diego trolley route, and has danced in performances in Escondido and Santa Barbara.

“Trolley Dances was my first performance with the company,” Lundberg said. “We were at the Mission Valley Library in the children’s reading room and we did a dance reading of Alice in Wonderland. It was fun. It was a really small space and if (each) group was over 20 or 25, we had to perform the show twice. Since there were eight groups already, we had to do it, like, 25 times each day. Luckily it was just a six to seven minute dance. It was a really good turnout.”

Jean Isaac started Trolley Dances five years ago in an effort to bring dance into public spaces and reach new audiences. The show takes place two weekends in a row, and consists of eight stops along a San Diego trolley route, including shopping centers and various libraries. Participants meet a tour guide at each stop who escorts them to the venue where they watch the performance. Performances are site-specific, some more interactive than others.

“There were more people the second weekend, because while people were out in public the first weekend they had seen the groups along the trolley route, so the second weekend they came back and saw the show themselves,” Lundberg said.

Founded in 1972, the San Diego Dance Theater is a nonprofit company that trains dancers of all races, ages and physical abilities. When Isaac took over as artistic director in 1997 after serving as artistic director for San Diego’s 3’s Company and Isaac/McCaleb Dancers for 17 years, the theater began to court its current reputation for unconventional programs performed by a diverse array of professional dancers. The company is also recognized for its intensely physical, provocative performances.

Cabaret dancers besides Lundberg include John Diaz, a modern dance teacher and performer, Victor Alonso, a San Diego native who also dances with the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective and Liv Isaac-Nollet, Jean Isaac’s daughter and a magna cum laude graduate of SUNY Purchase. Faith Jensen-Ismay, a local dance teacher at Palomar College and SDSU who has performed in various troupes with Isaac for 11 years, Alison Dieterrle-Smith, a performer, choreographer, teacher and videographer, and Veronica Martin-Lamm, who has danced with SDDT since 1999, complete the cast.

Intimate Cabaret Dances shows Friday and Saturday, Jan. 16-17, at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 18 at 6:00 p.m. at the San Diego Museum of Art’s James S. Copley Auditorium. Tickets are $20 general admission, $18 for seniors and $12 for students. Call (619) 220-8497 for tickets, and (619) 696-1966 for more information.