Baz Luhrmann’s Stage Version of Strictly Ballroom Sets Dates for Australian Premiere

Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 film Strictly Ballroom will finally hit the stage, as the long-in-the-works stage adaptation has announced dates to play the Lyric Theatre in Sydney, Australia beginning March 25, 2014. Tickets are currently being sold through June 1, 2014.

Set in the world of competitive ballroom dancing, Strictly Ballroom The Musical tells the story of a lifelong ballroom dancer who struggles to find his own style of dancing as he competes to win an international prize, despite his flashy, crowdpleasing moves not being strictly ballroom.The film was released in 1992 and starred Paul Mercurio as leading man Scott Hastings.

The "all-singing, all-dancing" production will include music from the film’s BAFTA-winning soundtrack, as well as new songs from a host of world class composers. The film’s creative team will reunite for the musical adaptation, with director Lurmann on writing duty with Craig Pearce, John “Cha Cha” O’Connell choreographing and Catherine Martin designing costumes.

"Strictly Ballroom has always been very personal to me," Luhrmann said in 2010 prior to the show's workshop. "The genesis drawn from my childhood experience in the world of ballroom dancing. The creative and life ideals of the story, that being that a life lived in fear is a life half lived; and creativity triumphing over creative oppression, the belief there’s always more than just one way (to cha cha cha), are ideals I live and create by to this day.”

Luhrmann produced and directed the 2002 Broadway revival of La Boheme, earning his first directorial Tony nomination. The filmmaker is also an accomplished actor, having performed onstage in Sydney and at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, where he originally conceived the idea of Strictly Ballroom as a stage play in 1984.