Liam Steel is cross-legged on the floor of the rehearsal studio, on the phone to writer Ben Payne and fine-tuning the book version of SINNER, the stunning debut by Stan Won't Dance. "Can we change the lanky one to the chubby one?" he laughs. "It's just that, well, look at us, who's the lanky one out of me and Rob?"

The Rob in question is Rob Tannion, Steel's former colleague in DV8, and joint artistic director of the aforementioned Stan. They made their debut with two preview performances of SINNER at the Purcell Room at London's South Bank Centre — and on the strength of that they've already got a book deal. That's pretty good going.

But catch SINNER, which is set to tour throughout 2004 and 2005, and you'll understand why Stan Won't Dance has hit the ground running. Inspired by the horrific Soho bombing in 2000, it's a powerful piece of dance theatre that sets a new standard in integrating text and movement. For Steel and Tannion that's central to getting together as a creative partnership.

"Our mission statement is 'How do you write something for a dance?'. Central to the idea of Stan Won't Dance is the way writing is used," says Steel. "Writers just haven't been writing for dance theatre but our aim is to truly combine text and dance. In DV8 it was always devised and/or improvised but we want to take it into new areas."

"A lot of it is about not wanting to work with a blank page — we want to tell other stories — but of course you still put a large part of yourself into each new character."

The immediate positive response to their debut has backed up the pair's belief that there's a market for work that's both powerful and accessible but it's proved a tougher challenge than either realised. Yet Steel and Tannion, who both have extensive performing and directing credits behind them, are fired up by the freedom Stan has brought them. It takes some guts to go back to the beginning and start over in small venues but they talk about Stan with the bright eyes young kids get when opening their Christmas presents.

"Of course you have that thought about 'Oh God it's starting over again'," says Steel. "But it's exciting because it's your work and you have the control — it's all down to you! You're the one who can shape everything about it."

Tannion agrees. "Whenever you're creating works with somebody else, you're under the control of a director, so when it comes down to it, you're working to somebody else's vision."

Liam "We've had a fair run with other companies but you're still trying to fulfil the company idea and it's the company that gets the credit for your work. With Stan Won't Dance, this is our identity."

The idea for getting together as a creative duo had been simmering on the backburner throughout their shared six-year history with DV8, but it took former DV8 administrator Ellie Beedham, Executive Director of Stan Wonąt Dance, to sit them down and make them thrash out their ideas.

Rob "We'd always had the idea of working together, and we knew from DV8 that physically we move well together and emotionally connect. But we needed a push to make it happen."

Liam "Our ideas are very similar, both in terms of direction for the company and the specifics of dance. I've been working more in theatre and Rob's been working more in dance, so it's on the edge of both those worlds that we come together."

Rob "We are very different people with very strong egos but it's a shared vision because we do see something similar in creating work. It's about how we respond to it individually."

The strength of their creative bond was tested to the full in an intense three and a half week rehearsal period for SINNER. Steel had previously worked with writer Ben Payne but the working methods behind Stan made performance virgins of them all.

Rob "It's not like using a fixed script. Ben was at the rehearsals and we asked him to change and challenge us during the working process. We were asking ourselves: 'How can we dance these words? How can we physicalise this text?' It's that way of working that's fundamental to how we see the identity of Stan — it's a theatre dance company."

Watch SINNER and the seamless mesh of dialogue and action seems instinctively naturalistic, a stark contrast to the separation of the two disciplines that usually occurs in dance theatre. But reaching that point proved a steep upward learning curve.

Liam "It's the hardest thing we've ever done. We were both in the position where we were finding it really hard and asking ourselves what we'd got ourselves into. The real difficulty is learning how to get the words and the moves to integrate — you have to have the words ingrained in your body to make it work."

Rob "I'm lucky in that I'm able to pick things up visually but it's difficult to combine text and movement, for one thing it uses the same side of the brain. It's a real technical challenge."

Liam "Actors who have seen SINNER asked us 'How do you do that?' But the best compliment we've had is that we make it look natural. It's exciting as a first leap into something because together we've got so much experience and we know there's so much we can do with this."

Rob "With Stan Wonąt Dance we wanted a company that's really integrated from the beginning: to test how we can push things."

As debut subject matter goes, SINNER is certainly heavyweight material. Built around the highly charged chemistry between two strangers who encounter each other in a pub. Steel and Tannion prove the potency of their partnership in a piece that plays intriguing games with the kind of preconceptions we make about people on the flimsiest of evidence.

Liam "We wanted to deal with something that dance doesn't deal with anymore. Dealing with real stories in a way that people relate to. Theatre allows you to do that in a way that dance doesn't. SINNER is about narrative and story — you want to feel that you're going on a journey."

As its disturbing events unfold, Steel and Tannion create the kind of electric intensity on stage that brings to mind, and this is no mean complement, the excitement whipped up by the early collaborations of Lloyd Newson and Nigel Charnock in DV8's early days. SINNER has echoes of both Dead Dreams Of Monochrome Men and My Sex, Our Dance but filtered through a literary theatrical tradition.

Though the starting point was the harrowing story of David Copeland, the notorious nailbomber whose racist and homophobic leanings led him to mount attacks in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho, SINNER is in no sense a factual account.

Liam "It's based on true events — but it's not about Copeland as such. It's more about the kind of people who commit those kind of acts. We wanted to look into the psyche of someone who could just walk into a pub and end up devastating so many lives — the whole chain of events in the Soho bombing took just three and a half minutes."

"It's hard to admit to but if anything, making SINNER made me a little more empathetic to the characters we so readily label as monsters. We are so quick to demonise them, just to make it easier for ourselves to distance ourselves from the act. Society doesn't want to admit to any part of that, to admit that the potential for such acts lurks within people."

Both Steel and Tannion admit that they weren't sure how such dark material would play out on stage. But as it turns out, SINNER mines a vein of sinister humour that serves to enhance its dramatic power.

Rob "'It was amazing to see the way things come alive on stage. Before we performed SINNER I didn't realize there were such big laughs in it. It made me go back and look at my own sense of humour."

One of the best laughs is the way the text neatly mirrors the lyrics from Robbie Williams' Angels, a deft trick that turned out to be spookily apposite. "We didn't know it at the time but it turns out that it was Robbie Williams on the jukebox at the Admiral Duncan in Soho when the bomb went off," says Steel. "Knowing that sends a shudder down your spine."

PS: And for those of you wondering about the identity of the mysterious Stan, he who won't dance, here's the answer. "Oh, it just comes from our names," admits Tannion. "You take St from Steel and tan from Tannion, fit them together and there's Stan."