Dancers interact with a virtual environment in a triple bill by Phoenix Dance at the Galway Arts Festival, writes Christine Madden.

Only a choreographer could discern creative potential in the Friday-night hordes of staggering young drunks that ricochet off walls, street lamps and each other, looking to get lucky. But Darshan Singh Bhuller has found inspiration in far darker corners of the psyche. Why not get lucky himself with a lighter piece about youthful urban desperation?

Bhuller created this piece exploring young urban lust, drunkenness and end-of-week energy, Eng-er-land, for Phoenix Dance Theatre, of which he became artistic director in 2002. Highly acclaimed in the UK and internationally, this contemporary dance company comes to Ireland for the first time this summer as one of the star attractions of the Galway Arts Festival.

Phoenix will celebrate its 25th birthday next year, and has remained true to its name by undergoing several fiery incarnations over this quarter-century existence. The company aims for diversity within its corps of dancers and commissioned choreographers as well as its repertoire, with polished productions that tackle social and political issues as well as abstract movement.

"We really are a diverse bunch of people," says Bhuller. "What we represent is modern-day Britain, the future of our society, rather than being separated by religion, colour or creed. We feel very proud of that."

Phoenix Dance Theatre emerged in 1981, when "three young guys in Chapeltown at a school in Harehill" (parts of Leeds known for being rough) came into contact with a teacher called Nadine Senior. She started a dance movement class for children in inner-city areas.

These "three lads who wanted to dance" - David Hamilton (who became artistic director), Donald Edwards and Vilmore James - formed a company, which grew and eventually received Arts Council funding.

They had a fresh approach to contemporary dance and, as they gained in popularity, eventually moved out of Chapeltown into Leeds's city centre in 1987, and began to employ female dancers as well. As well as winning numerous awards over the years, they also represented the UK at the Cultural Olympiad in Atlanta in 1996.

Their eclectic repertoire includes the works of many different and respected choreographers, including Philip Taylor, Michael Clarke and recently Robert Cohan, when Bhuller included his piece Forest in honour of Cohan's 80th birthday. An integral figure in the development of contemporary dance in the UK, Cohan had originally created the piece for London Contemporary Dance Theatre, the company with which Bhuller was first associated.

Bhuller began his dance career at the age of 16, when he left Leeds and the tutelage of Senior to attend the London Contemporary Dance School. He became a member of LCDT in 1978. He left in 1994 to take on creative and directing roles with various companies in the UK and internationally, as well as forming his own group, Singh Productions, through which he concentrates on film and stage production.

He feels lucky, he says, to be able to continue to do this at the same time as being artistic director of Phoenix. "Film is a real passion for me. With today's technology, everything is very accessible. I basically do it at home, taught myself how to do it." Bhuller's film-making skills contribute to his dance productions, into which he threads media technology for enhanced effect, such as in Eng-er-land.

In contrast, his political piece, Planted Seeds, uses no technology at all. This full-length work, about the civil war in Bosnia, depicts families torn apart and women tortured and abused as a result of the petty lawlessness of warfare. "I try to be social and political, and have always found the ability to make critical comment in different ways," he explains.

"Planted Seeds was a release for me. I was so frustrated seeing what was happening on television every night. I stripped the whole theatre. It was just dancers in three different stories, all of them true. One was a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, with a Muslim and Serb falling in love. It was on television. They were trying to escape Serbia and were shot on a famous bridge in Sarajevo."

Another story focused on the abuses against women. "They bear the brunt of the most horrific violence," Bhuller says. Eng-er-land, which he describes as a "very light piece", comes as a contrast to this more serious and darker work such as Planted Seeds and Requiem, in which he explores the anguish of a family whose child has been abducted.

"There's a lot of physical humour," he says of Eng-er-land. "The most natural thing human beings do is laugh. It should be part of the dance vocabulary as well. Usually I do heavy pieces about war and destruction. This is a nice break."

There is a dark side to the piece, which basically displays how "young people destroy themselves with alcohol". But Bhuller takes creative advantage of the high spirits of urban dwellers at the end of the working week, showing "the humorous and extreme situations people get into through alcohol".

Working with Kitt Monkman in media company KMA in York, which created a virtual city as a backdrop, and British DJ Blessed, Bhuller put the piece together almost as if it were a film, with a storyboard as a choreographic blueprint. The dancers move in and through the background as it effortlessly morphs and changes focus. The result is something like a living film, in which real dancers interact with a virtual environment.

For example, one woman in the piece has stopped trying to pick up men at the bar and begins to daydream. "She's daydreaming about Miami Beach," explains Bhuller, "and there's a cigarette machine with a picture of the beach on it. Then the camera moves in and she suddenly is on the beach."

The music mix makes it feel very contemporary, as well as making the piece particularly accessible to young people. But there are "little snippets of stuff personal to myself" in the mix, he says, such as the snatch of Billie Holiday that creeps into the daydreaming sequence.

Two additional pieces flesh out Phoenix's triple-bill programme for Galway: Signal by Henri Oguike, and Can You See Me by Rui Horta. Of Nigerian-Welsh descent, Oguike also trained at London Contemporary Dance School, and formed his own company in 1999. When Bhuller commissioned work from this award-winning choreographer, he asked for an "energetic, physical piece", and eventually Oguike brought in a music background of Japanese Taiko drums. "They're war drums from the olden days," Bhuller explains. The piece goes through several kinds of moods using the dancers' physiques. "There's no story, you just enjoy the athleticism of the bodies," he says. "It's amazing to watch."

With the final portion of the triple bill, Can You See Me, Portuguese choreographer Horta "wanted to do something very aggressive", says Bhuller. "It's about people showing off, and it pushes dancers to extremes, physically and mentally."

The piece, inspired by the music of Jimi Hendrix, features "taut, sensual movement, a lot of tension, almost as if the dancers were locked in a room together with a sound system. It's very intense." Horta has also won numerous awards, and has toured and directed extensively throughout Europe.

To celebrate the company's 25th anniversary, Bhuller says Phoenix Dance Theatre will tour the whole of England, and he is working on a tribute film to commemorate its achievements.

"But in another sense, I want to look forward to the future, not just litter the repertoire with old pieces. You can get gooey-eyed in looking back, but it's always been the case with Phoenix that we look forward." Just like the bird from Greek mythology, the company strives for continual rebirth.

Phoenix Dance perform in the Black Box Theatre from July 12-16, as part of the Galway Arts Festival, which runs from July 11-24. See www.galwayartsfestival.ie