It was a major coup for the Everyman to stage not only two world premieres by Rafael Bonachela, but also the first appearance ever by his newly formed company. The former Rambert dancer and associate choreographer has always been a man to watch. For the launch of his company he boldly avoided playing safe, with two uncompromisingly stark pieces under the title Voices, linked by the use of the human voice in the music, and also by the feeling that you are watching people under stress and in pain.

The first is set to Luciano Berio's haunting Naturale for viola, tam-tam and voice. The six dancers are dressed in everyday clothes jeans, shorts, T-shirts and the feeling, as they explore each other in different combinations, is of uncertainty, of expected and sometimes realised rejection. There is a pose Bonachela uses more than once in which the dancers squat in line on the stage, their hands clasped on top of their heads, as though waiting in some interminable Kafkaesque queue. The atmosphere is lightened when the music takes on a slightly folk-dance feel. As it ends you wonder who these fascinating people are, and what will happen to them.

The second piece is by the avant-garde electronic composer Matthew Herbert, combining sometimes jarring, sometimes beautiful sounds with the poem Rendezvous with Death, by Alan Seeger, the words of a Kurdish asylum-seeker awaiting deportation, and percussion sounds taken from used or inert Israeli rounds and used tornado shells from Iraq. The dancers are clearly trapped under an authoritarian regime literally under, as above them we see projections of guards standing almost motionless in a frighteningly austere institution (Bonachela tells me they are North Koreans, secretly filmed). The dancing is very much in keeping with this background beautiful but despairing, hinting at a better future but never achieving it. Those not taking part at any moment remain on stage, as trapped as the characters they are depicting.

This is heavy stuff, but thanks to the excellence of his dancers and to his insight into the human personality, Bonachela brings it off. I wish his new company much success.