Eva Yerbabuena is bringing ‘the poor little sister of classical dance’ to a world audience – and we can’t get enough of her.

In a field where the purists will stamp on you at the slightest sign that you may be betraying your roots, Eva Yerbabuena is managing to keep everyone happy. But, says the woman who is helping bring flamenco into the modern arena, she never consciously set out to be successful. “You don’t think about success when you’re starting out,” she says. “You want to know what you can achieve as a person.”

She has achieved a great deal in a short time. Born in Frankfurt in 1970, Yerbabuena came to Spain at two weeks old to be raised by her grandparents while her parents continued working in Germany. “I got into flamenco because of the wish of an aunt of mine who died when she was 29. She wanted me to study dance, and my grandmother took me to dance classes when I was 11. For me, it was just a game, but my teachers saw something they liked and encouraged me to continue. I think about my aunt often. It’s as though she knew my destiny.”

And what a destiny it has been. Yerbabuena turned professional at 15 and went to Seville, where she met her husband, Paco Jarana, a guitarist who is now the musical director and composer of her company. She was soon sharing a stage with the likes of Joaquín Cortés, going on to form her own company, the Eva Yerbabuena Ballet Flamenco. Her first show, Eva, went on to be an international success, and has brought with it a rapid rise to the peak of her career: in 2004 she was invited to perform by the great German choreographer Pina Bausch; she has made films with Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis; and in 2001 she won Spain’s prestigious National Dance Award – one of many.

Yerbabuena is a regular at Sadler’s Wells: this month audiences will be able to enjoy El huso de la memoria (The Spindle of Memory), a show, she says, that has to do with “experience – the things I’ve lived through, and the things I will live through” – and which has met with rave reviews in Spain.

It has been a meteoric rise, but the short, quietly spoken 36-year-old is perfectly in control, discussing her own work with the same intensity and passion that informs the five touring shows she has choreographed to date.

Hers is an almost austere form of flamenco. “Baile” and “danza” are two words loosely translated into English as “dancing” and “dance”, and Yerbabuena’s career has been devoted to breaking down the distinction between them. She is redefining flamenco as neo-classical dance, questioning flamenco stereotypes and retaining the traditional forms – soleá, seguiriya, tango – while stripping away their potential improvisational excesses.

Along with Cortés and Sara Baras, Yerbabuena is one of a small group of dancers who have taken on themselves the responsibility of bringing flamenco to a world audience. But she is quick to downplay her own importance in this respect. “It’s not just me who’s doing this. The great dancers before me helped to pave the way. It’s important that flamenco stops being thought of as the poor little sister of classical dance.”

For Yerbabuena, the “great dancers” are headed by the legendary Carmen Amaya, a towering figure who died in 1963 but who is still the yardstick by which contemporary female dancers must be judged. “Little by little women like Carmen have opened up flamenco so that it’s no longer simply dominated by men.” Her show 5 Mujeres 5, which she performed at Sadler’s Wells in 2005, has been seen as her own celebration of that fact.

“Success is a difficult thing to manage,” she says. “Just like in life, the secret is in finding the right balance – in my case, the balance between what the public wants and what I want to do. Many people give up along the way. But success brings responsibility with it – you become a yardstick yourself, and you don’t want to let anyone down. You have to stay humble.

“The hardest thing is to be as personal as possible. I like drinking from the best sources. We all use the same vehicle to communicate – we all use the words ‘I love you’, but it sounds different depending on who’s saying it. I don’t like imitations.”

Like the great guitarist Paco de Lucía, Yerbabuena says she would have preferred to be a singer. “Singing is the first thing that touches your soul,” she says. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a great voice, so I have to try to dance what I can’t sing.”

Yerbabuena is still based in the town of Dos Hermanas, just outside Seville. There seems to be no danger that she will ever lose contact with the Andalucían roots that are still at the heart of what she does. With all the travelling, is she ever nostalgic? “The only thing I really miss,” she muses, and for the first time a note of melancholy sounds in her voice, “is my 11-year-old daughter Manuela. But she understands.”