DANZA Contemporanea de Cuba made their debut at Newcastle Theatre Royal on Tuesday with an extraordinary dance triptych of superb Cuban rhythm. The distinct style of this company is spontaneous and full of Spanish magic, tangled with African inspiration.

Brought together by artistic director, Miguel Iglesias Ferrer, the three pieces are soaked in Cuban culture with Jan Linken’s choreography of Folia flooding the stage in blood red, while George Cesspedes’ choreography and costume design switches from delicate to atom-splitting energy in a heartbeat with the 21 dancers all in perfect formation in his juicy production of Mambo 3XXI.

But it was Spanish-born choreographer Rafael Bonachela who opened the night’s Cuban dance-theatre with Demo-N/Crazy, a piece of rhythmic hooliganism that pulled the emotion out of mayhem with the raw elegance of innovation.

This is dance in a different form; dance that stretches the body twice more than the imagination, way past movement, past contemporary dance and beyond gymnastic.

Bonachela’s choreography is full of surprising, disconcerting moves that are angular, compelling and strangely natural in their violence.

His male and female dancers, with their simple white shorts, show us the delicious androgenised purity of simple nudity. His interpretation of Nina Simone’s If You Go Away made me want to go back again and again to feel that unmistakable heartbeat of Cuba. I loved it and am looking forward to a rather neat and pioneering project involving five Danza performers and five Newcastle boxers when they come together in July to perform a new dance experience called Seconds Out.

This project is inspired by the 2012 Olympics and will take place at Dance City, Newcastle, on July 16, to celebrate the diversity of sport and dance. Choreographed by Israeli-born Itzik Galili, and as part of a full programme, Seconds Out has all the creative ingredients to produce a project that’s full of North- Eastern promise and a bit more.

Helen Brown