Northern Ballet Theatre's British premiere of Birgit Scherzer's Requiem!! is an athletic leap for the Leeds company.

Under the ground-breaking direction of the late Christopher Gable, NBT had been synonymous with storytelling dance dramas. Since his arrival in August 2001, Canadian artistic director David Nixon has sought to stretch his dancers, to bring in more classical elements, while remaining true to the NBT house style.

Now NBT has clasped the avant garde for what Nixon calls "an exciting journey into the realm of non-narrative dance theatre."

Non-narrative? The cynical, or the Yorkshireman not prepared to part with £4 for a programme, may offer a curt "what the hell was that about?" at the end of this 1991 German work that is as startling as those two exclamation marks at the end of the Requiem!! title.

You face two options. Watch the three-part Requiem!! 'blind' and take up the invitation to interpret a metaphorical work full of signs and symbols in your own way, while being torn in two by the beauty of Mozart's Requiem music, re-arranged by Scherzer for a choir of 50 from the Leeds Festival Chorus and soloists David Fieldsend, tenor, John Bromley, bass, Margaret McDonald, contralto, and Simone Sauphanor, soprano. Or read the notes - one day they will be extracted from the programme for display for the benefit of all - and discover the fuller picture.

First reactions without recourse to notes: the piles of shoes, and stripping to next to nothing suggest Auschwitz; Desir Samaai and Christopher Giles's Couple, in a pas de deux of magical symmetry, could have been Adam and Eve, the start of life's journey to death. The black umbrellas were funereal - such a contrast to Singin' In The Rain - and then there was the suitcase. The suitcase? Proof that dancers can bring rhythm to even the most cumbersome of objects.

And now with notes: there are two constant characters Death (Jonathan Ollivier) and M, as in Man. M1 (Christian Broomhall) in Part One is mortal man through the ages; M2 (Hironao Takahashi) in Part Two is Mozart with his domineering Father (David Kierce) and Mother (Charlotte Talbot); M3 (Jonathan Renna) is modern man, traveling with his suitcase.

Requiem!! works either way, informed or uninformed and reliant on sensory responses.

This bravura work, with sublime singing and rope work and a percussive sequence with shoes clattering the walls, is a striking new addition to NBT.

Updated: 12:25 Tuesday, February 18, 2003