"For me the way our programming works is to do something for people who have never seen dance before, people who come for the music and people who know a lot about dance and want a bit of a challenge."

The way Rambert Dance Company's artistic director Mark Baldwin tries to achieve this aim is by offering a varied show which takes in the abstract, the physical and the classical, offering what he calls "a first course, main course and pudding" across four separate pieces.

Rambert's ten female and 11 male dancers will perform three pieces specially commissioned for the company and one critically-acclaimed revival by choreographer Christopher Bruce.

"We have an Australian choreographer, Garry Stewart, and two Americans, which is why we have called it World View," says Baldwin. "Our dancers come from all over the world - Cuba, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Poland, Latvia, Essex and Devon - so the influences are taken from all over the place."

Opening the show is a piece by new choreographer and former Rambert dancer Melanie Teall.

L'Eveil, or Strength, is an abstract piece designed for six female dancers, who perform to songs performed live by singer Melanie Marshall.

"Song and dance go together so well," says Baldwin. "Melanie sings a Kurt Weill song called Je Ne T'aime Pas, and Feeling Good, a song made famous by Nina Simone.

"The Kurt Weill song is very operatic, while Feeling Good is really raunchy. It gives the dancers the chance to show some real scope."

The company has worked with an experienced American choreographer on the commissioned work Gran Partita, which is set to four movements from Mozart's piece of the same name.

"The choreographer, Karole Armitage, did Madonna's Vogue video," says Baldwin. "She's able to put her stamp on a lot of different things. Originally she was called the punk ballerina because she used to choreograph ballet to wild punk music in the early 1980s."

The second half of the show opens with Swansong, a revived piece by Christopher Bruce, whose images oftorture and brutality still resonate today.

"It was first produced in the 1980s at a time when there were a lot of terrible things happening in Chile," says Baldwin. "It is reflected through the sound of the South American pan pipes.

"The piece is focused on two interrogators and one victim. With what is happening in Iraq and Iran and the interrogations that seem to go on there, the countries have changed but the issue of people being persecuted hasn't.

"That's what is good about dance - it can be very subtly done, so the ideas creep up on you."

Closing the show is another new piece by Garry Stewart, the artistic director of the Australian Dance Theatre in his first Rambert commission, Infinity.

"It is very athletic," says Baldwin. "The dancers had to learn tumbling to add to their repertoire of classical ballet and contemporary dance.

"There are also yoga movements, and moments where they absolutely throw themselves off the stage. It is about how we are hurtling towards the end.

"Garry is one of Australia's best choreographers. It takes a lot of brute strength to do his work."

  • 7.45pm, from £11, 0870 0606650