"Flamenco is pure, transparent feeling," says Yasaray Rodriguez. "It's not like contemporary dance where everything is technical.

When you go to a flamenco performance you have to feel something."

A performer from Havana who trained in Andalusia with some of the great maestros, 29-year-old Rodriguez is the new sensation in Spanish dance. Speaking to us from Seville via her translator (her Spanish manager Cristina Marfil Urbano), she is on the verge of her first ever visit to the UK, a four-date tour arranged by Komedia which will see Rodriguez and her group play a two-night stint at the venue.

The show is called Sentir which, she explains, means simply "to feel". The performance passes through various emotional stages, escalating to a "crescendo" or "festivity". It is, she says, a "very intimate performance sobre but passionate".

Although Rodriguez has never performed in the UK before, she is well known throughout Europe and Latin America where she toured with the National Ballet Of Cuba. It was during her time with the company, which she joined at the age of 18, that she developed her interest in the gypsy dance of flamenco.

"I always felt the call of flamenco," she says. "That music always made me want to dance and to know more."

In 2001 she received a scholarship from the Cristina Heeren Flamenco Foundation in Seville, one of the two best schools in Spain, which enabled her to "make that dream come true" as she trained with flamenco maestros such as Milagros Menjbar, Manuel Soler and Carmen Ledesma.

"From Manuel I learnt the ability to move to different rhythms," she says. "From Carmen I learnt the passion and the fury, how to make an impact on the public. But the National Ballet Of Cuba was a great background. It was very demanding.

"I also studied Spanish classical ballet so all these techniques I have incorporated into my flamenco." "That combination," adds Urbano, "is very peculiar, very unique."

Throughout her training Yasaray Rodrguez developed a profound respect for the essence of traditional flamenco, and at the heart of Sentir is a desire to get away from the big theatrics of the large flamenco companies and concentrate on the close dialogue between her dancing and the music of her two guitarists and two singers.

"Yasaray is very modest," adds Urbano.

"She finds it hard to talk about herself. But I've seen her many times and the most important thing in my opinion is that she transmits what she feels to the public.

"Flamenco is not so much about the technique. It gets into your heart and your feet and you want more."