I have not yet seen New English Contemporary Ballet, but it’s clear from the dancers’ biographies that it delivers exactly what it says on the tin. They all have a classical ballet training, but they perform contemporary ballet works rather than the tutu’d repertoire.

Co-founder and artistic director Niall McMahon (inset right) himself trained at the Rambert School, and danced for some years with Scottish Ballet before an injury caused him to move into commercial shows including the Moulin Rouge. Since then he has been a respected teacher and ballet master. I asked him how NECB came to be formed.

“I felt there was a need for a company that wasn’t either very classical or very contemporary that would be able to tour. So Joanne Wright my co-founder, and I, with Arts Council funding, conducted a feasibility study to see whether that was something that the public would want – whether it had legs, and we found that it had.”

So what exactly does ‘contemporary ballet’ mean to this company ?

“We are a ballet company that has a contemporary repertoire. We show work that is very contemporary, but can also involve classical dancing on pointe.

“Glen Tetley [the American choreographer who has so successfully used classical technique in contemporary ways] said to me that he doesn’t want what he calls ‘vertical dancers’, because his idea is all about the torso. What I’m looking for is dancers who are vertical, but are able to use their torso too. Dancers with classical training can adapt very well to contemporary work – look at Baryshnikov, who had the ability to change over completely to contemporary work as he got older, or Sylvie Guillem, again a classical dancer, who has now changed her career and is experimenting with other styles. I have drawn inspiration from the work of great exponents of the modern European tradition like Willam Forsythe, Jiri Kylian and Richard Wherlock. I was at the Rambert School with Richard, and we have two pieces by him in the current programme.

“But it’s the personal experience of working with the late Peter Darrel, the founding choreographer and artistic director of Scottish Ballet, that has provided me with a model for developing a distinctive stylistic identity.”

The company is based in Nottingham, and has a school which has about 30 students, but can cater for many more as it grows in reputation, so it’s very much regarded as a permanent organisation. Even though it has currently lost its funding it will be able to continue.

“That’s a setback” says Niall, “but I think we have proved again and again that we can perform at the highest level. We can survive because we are so pro-active. We have wonderful dancers and choreographers working with us. In fact, we are also starting a junior company to give more dancers experience, and that will definitely go ahead next month. We’ve had applications from more than 200 dancers who are recent graduates, and we’re selecting from those at the moment.”

The programme that the company is touring consists of four works, all by contemporary choreographers, but with very different styles.

“S(c)ent was made in 2007 by Richard Wherlock, with whom we have had a long and close association. He’s made it to two movements from Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which was the original inspiration. But he met an executive from the perfume industry, and was very interested to hear they also make smells like car aromas, or ground coffee, for situations where an illusion is created by a particular aroma. This led him to wonder how one person interprets the sensory signals another person emits, and what signs others associate with us when we’re not there, and those questions are addressed in the work”

“Jamie Thomson’s .com together looks at our world in which people can live without interaction or personal responsiveness and opt out of real life for hours on end in cyber-relationships. This means they miss out on the warmth of touch, the subtle response to mood, qualities that belong to real life. So it’s an abstract celebration of the power of real human relationships. Sometimes it’s strong and robotic, but it also has moments of great tenderness.

“Richard Wherlock’s other piece, Light Into Shade is a lovely duet. It’s a simple study of movement; it has a lot of elegance and also a lot of emotion.”

The final piece, by the Italian choreographer Davide Bombana is danced to an arrangement for string orchestra of one of Beethoven’s late quartets, hence its title In C Sharp Minor. Bombana says: “In this work it’s as if the music took me by the hand, and I let myself be led by the feelings and passion that it suggested to me. I have always loved the late Beethoven quartets for their purity of form and for their incredible depths. With such music, combined with the power of dance, a story becomes irrelevant”.

n New English Contemporary Ballet are at The Everyman, Cheltenham, next Tuesday at 7.45pm.