Students in their final year at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance will perform at the National Centre for Early Music in York on Thursday, November 18.

Yes, you read that correctly: 20 to 25 dancers will be taking to the floor at a converted church so strongly associated with the live performance of myriad forms of music.

“It’s not a sprung floor, so that’s very different for us, and we’ll be putting a dance floor down for the night,” says Deborah Johnson, head of choreography and joint acting vice-principal at the Leeds dance school. “With the floor not being raised, that’s something we’ve had to think about when creating the dance movements: we have to consider how it will be watched.”

A visit to the National Centre was vital for the preparations. “We looked at how we could install dance in that space, which is different from a theatre space,” says Deborah. “As it’s not a raised stage, for one of the pieces we’re going to give out a note saying that if you’d like to move to observe the dance form different viewpoints, you’re welcome to do so.

“To facilitate that, we’ll have the seating arranged in an arc, to allow people to move around the sides.”

Tomorrow’s ground-breaking performance will form part of the New Worlds strand of imove (CORRECT), the Legacy Trust UK programme that is bringing together Yorkshire’s creative talent for events designed to inspire the public ahead of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In this instance, the Leeds dance school is collaborating with contemporary composers from the University of York to create Movement & Marriage, a performance that combines original music and choreography.

This will be the first in a series of events involving the Northern School of Contemporary Dance over the next two years, during which the school will link up with a range of arts organisations across the region. Tonight’s inaugural event will draw inspiration from the music-and-marriage theme of this summer’s York Early Music Festival. In doing so, the relationship and dialogue between sound and music will be explored, alongside the physical resonances of the dancers’ movement through the space.

The Leeds dance school and York university music department have worked together on projects for the past five years, but Deborah believes Movement & Marriage “moves the relationship forward creatively”. “For our dancers, it gives them a very different experience of performing in a different space and being able to adapt,” says Deborah.

Tonight’s performance also will features a preview of another work on the theme of movement and marriage, choreographed by Deborah for the eight dancers of Verve, the school’s postgraduate performance company.

A further public show will follow at the Northern School on December 1 at 7.30pm, and looking further ahead, the school is making plans for a project at the National Media Museum in Bradford next autumn.

*Northern School of Contemporary Dance presents Movement & Marriage at National Centre for Early Music, York, on Thursday, Nov 18 at 7.30pm. Tickets: £7, £6 concessions, £5 students, on 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk