put on your red shoes and dance the blues

After stunning audiences on London's West End last year, Matthew Bourne's thrilling adaptation of The Red Shoes will make its American debut at the Ahmason this fall. Based on the 1948 Powell and Pressburger film, which is in turn based on the tragic fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson, The Red Shoes is the story of a talented young dancer who finds herself torn between love and her career, with heartbreaking consequences.

An intoxicating exploration into the mind of an aspiring ballerina, the lengths she'll go to achieve her dreams, and the two men who vie for her attentions, The Red Shoes follows the young dancer from the corps to the spotlight, from London to the French Rivera, unfurling as a beautiful show-within-a-show before building to an explosive and haunting finale.

The production reunites Bourne with some of his frequent collaborators: Lez Brotherston, lighting designer Paule Constable and sound designer Paul Groothuis, with a dizzying score mixed by Terry Davies, including music by Bernard Herrmann, composer for classic thrillers such as Psycho, Vertigo and Citizen Kane.