He’s a “movement junkie”, while she’s described herself as “Lucozade on legs”. So a collaboration between the innovative Catalan dancer and choreographer Rafael Bonachela and the artistic director of Southbank Centre, Jude Kelly OBE, ought to be an explosion of effervescence.

They’re going to need all their combined fizz and flair as they team up to mount a spectacular revival of the musical Carmen Jones. Oscar Hammerstein II’s adaptation of the Georges Bizet opera opened on Broadway in 1943 and was made into a film starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in 1954. It featured an entirely African-American cast and shifted the opera’s story of romance and murder from 19th-century Seville to the South Carolina and Chicago of the 1940s.

Hot-blooded gypsy Carmen became a restless worker in a parachute factory, Don José turned into Joe, her GI lover; and the toreador Escamillo was reborn as a boxer, Husky Miller. Kelly, who will direct the new production, and Bonachela, an SBC associate artist, have characteristically given Hammerstein’s version a vigorous shake-up. Their Carmen Jones will be set not in America, but in 21st-century Cuba. With a Latin sensuality, the faded, crumbling grandeur of the Havana streets and a strong sense of culturally rich folk history, this is a new bold take on the musical: Bizet meets the Buena Vista Social Club.

Their efforts to pull it off are likely to be subject to considerable scrutiny, and not just because Kelly and Bonachela are reinventing a musical theatre classic – Carmen Jones is one of the central productions in the all-new Royal Festival Hall. Kelly, in 2001 a close contender for leadership of the National Theatre and now chair of Culture, Ceremonies and Education for the Olympics Organising Committee, put the Battersea Arts Centre and the West Yorkshire Playhouse on the cultural map. She is renowned for her formidable energy levels and routinely referred to as the most powerful woman in the British arts. It’s hard to imagine her being daunted by any challenge – but even she acknowledges that running Southbank Centre, where she was appointed artistic director in 2005, is a gargantuan task, and one that brings with it awesome levels of responsibility.

It was a performance in the Purcell Room by the “bad boys” of British contemporary dance, Michael Clark and Stephen Petronio, that gave direction to the ambitions of the 18-year-old Bonachela, who had first arrived in London one week earlier. “I didn’t know that kind of work existed, and as soon as I saw it, I thought, that’s what I wanna do,” he recalls. “So for me to be part of this, it really is – mind-blowing!”

It will be his job, as choreographer of Carmen Jones, to help Kelly present a show that will have a similarly devastating effect on today’s audiences. It’s a tall order; Bonachela has worked with everyone from the prestigious contemporary company Rambert to world-famous choreographers Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp to Kylie Minogue, but he’s never choreographed a musical before.

On top of that, Hammerstein’s musical, with its preCivil Rights setting, is often regarded as a dated period piece. On the other hand, Carmen Jonescombines the pizzazz of musical theatre with the exigence of an operatic score. That means it’s a good fit for a creative duo whose love of busting the boundaries between genres and high and popular culture is borne out in their eclectic CVs. Recently returned from a working trip to Cuba, Bonachela is bubbling with ideas and drenched in South American sunshine. Add to that Kelly’s own taste for Latin and Hispanic flavours, and their collaboration on the show begins to make perfect sense.

“I work a lot with flamenco,” says Kelly. “I’ve directed three of Paco Peña’s shows. When the performers finish a show at night and you get to a restaurant, everyone carries on singing and dancing. The community in Spain all sing and dance too, it’s a way of living. It’s about expressing passion. There’s a lot of pain in it – most flamenco is about broken hearts and poverty. There’s a lack of inhibition about saying, ‘This is how I feel.’ Carmen is full of people saying it how it is, which is a very Latin quality. So I wanted a choreographer who could not only do dance, but would take on the idea that this was a community of people who made sound, made dance just as a part of the way they live. And I felt that Rafael got that immediately.”

“It’s Latin blood, Latin identity,” agrees Bonachela. “The heat is a big thing, to be able to be in the street so many hours of the day, so many days of the year. When I was a kid I used to be out in the streets at 10 o’clock at night. From when you’re little, you always listen to music. Singing and dancing, they are part of the Latin character.”

There are other persuasive reasons, too, for relocating the musical’s action – the pervasive sense of a military presence, of poverty, and of the longing to escape to a better life. Bonachela speaks of the ubiquitous power, in Cuba, of the American dollar, and of a people who freely shared their feelings and hopes for the future with him.

“People in Cuba are very, very open, so you’re going to go for a walk, and about 20 people are going to approach you. Part of it is a business thing – they want to sell you cigars, they want to sell you anything else you could possibly imagine! But because I speak Spanish I could get away from all that and say look, ‘I’m not a tourist, I’m here working.’ And I would sit and chat. Nobody there really dreams of becoming a doctor or an engineer. They want to box, to dance or sing – those they think of as ways to get out, to be able to make some money.”

He found contemporary dance artists in Havana creating their own blend of Afro-Caribbean and Spanish influences; he hopes to absorb what he saw and produce choreography for Carmen Jones that will be a physical language of storytelling rather than an opportunity for virtuosity.

What Kelly roguishly refers to as the show’s “band” will, in fact, be the Southbank Centre’s two resident orchestras, the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia, who will take turns to play at performances. The collaboration is a step towards establishing what Kelly hopes will be a “community of artists. That sort of interaction is, I think, what a place like this could be really good at.”

The production itself is co-produced by commercial impresario Raymond Gubbay – a partnership Kelly sees enduring into the future, along with many others she plans to establish. Due to the demanding nature of the score, the cast is drawn from both the operatic and musical theatre worlds. As in Hammerstein’s original vision, all the performers, led by the South African star Tsakane Valentine as Carmen, are black.

“That’s partly why I chose the piece, apart from its brilliance,” says Kelly. “I feel strongly that there just aren’t enough opportunities for black British or black American musical performers to demonstrate their talents. There aren’t enough vehicles, and as a result their voices often don’t get trained for demanding work like Carmen Jones. It’s a circle that needs breaking.”

Accordingly, Kelly, never one to spot a problem without tackling it, has established Voicelab at the SBC – an initiative that provides vocal training for singers at all levels, some professionals, some amateurs, some whole choirs. Over 18,000 voices will be raised in song over the SBC’s celebratory RFH reopening weekend. Just the prospect of it raises the spirits – and it’s that uplifting quality that Kelly believes is at the heart of great musical theatre.

“It has a complete sense of expressiveness. It’s such an exacting genre, it has to be joyful even if it’s tragic. And that comes from the attack of the energy and the lyricism. It’s a celebration of human feelings. People come out of the theatre more in love with the energy and vitality and passion that humanity has to offer.”

In the face of such powerful creative conviction, it’s difficult to disagree.

Carmen Jones is at the Royal Festival Hall, July 25 to September 2 (0871 663 2584)

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