The name ab [intra] means “from within” in Latin, and Rafael Bonachela’s new work does indeed sweep you into its own dazzling, taut, beautiful, almost otherworldly place – so much so that there are times you realise you have almost forgotten to breathe. At one point I heard someone behind me start to cry very quietly, for this is dance that burrows deep within you, triggering all kinds of emotions.

Janessa Dufty and Izzac Carroll. Photograph © Pedro Greig

ab [intra] is the first full-length work that Bonachela has choreographed in six years. Made with the dancers of the company, who undertook a series of intense improvisations at the start of the rehearsal process, it has an extraordinary power, speaking about relationships, yearning, connections, anguish and trust, exploring the power we have to draw others to us and also to push them away, about longing to fit in yet struggling with loneliness and despair.

Writing in the theatre program, Bonachela describes ab [intra] as “an energy transfer between the internal and external. For me it is more than the external expression of internal concepts, in this dance sphere it is a representation of energy – an...