THE world premiere tour of Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes will visit Southampton next year, the Daily Echo can reveal.

A beloved fairy-tale and Academy Award-winning movie, The Red Shoes has seduced audiences and inspired generations of dancers with its tale of obsession, possession and one girl’s dream to be the greatest dancer in the world.

Victoria Page lives to dance in the production, which comes to Mayflower Theatre from March 21 to 25, but her ambitions become a battleground between the two men who inspire her passion.

It's an intoxicating drama where life imitates art with fateful consequences.

Creating the coveted role of Victoria Page will be the Australian dancer and New Adventures Principal, Ashley Shaw.

Ashley is currently wowing audiences around the UK and receiving rave reviews for her performance as Aurora in Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, which visited Mayflower Theatre last month.

Matthew Bourne said: “It has been a long held ambition of mine to bring The Red Shoes to the stage as a dance/drama.

"It is set in the theatrical world of a touring dance company.

"It is actually about dance and dancers, a world that we all understand so well.

"However, the film’s genius is to make that theatrical world at times surreal, larger than life and highly cinematic.

"My challenge will be to capture some of that surreal, sensuous quality within the more natural theatre setting.

"It has also long been an ambition of mine to bring the incomparable music of Bernard Herrmann to the stage.

"It has been fascinating to discover how much of this music lends itself to storytelling through dance and this production will, I believe, be the first full length ballet to celebrate his unique music.”

Matthew Bourne’s magical new adaptation of the legendary Powell and Pressburger film reunites him with his regular collaborators and New Adventures Associate Artists and the team that brought you the world wide hit, Sleeping Beauty; Lez Brotherston (set and costumes), Paule Constable (lighting) and Paul Groothuis (sound).

This World Premiere is set to a new score arranged by New Adventures Associate Artist, Terry Davies using the mesmerising music of golden-age Hollywood composer, Bernard Herrmann, most famous for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Martin Scorsese.

Tickets for The Red Shoes go on sale on Friday.

Visit mayflower.org.uk or call 023 8071 1811.