Pet Shop Boys to compose ballet

The Pet Shop Boys are working on a ballet featuring "electronics and strings" to be staged at Sadler's Wells, Neil Tennant has revealed.

The singer told Radio 2 presenter Stuart Maconie that the piece, based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, could open at the London theatre in 2011.

He and keyboardist Chris Lowe were composing an original score, he said.

Winning an outstanding contribution at Wednesday night's Brit Awards had given the duo "a warm feeling", he added.

Tennant, 54, who told Maconie he liked "Shostakovich a lot" and that Prokofiev was "brilliant", said the ballet was "a very exciting project".

"It's quite a big project. There's a lot of music to write but we've written half an hour of it and we've done a bit of a workshop with them.

"It's got a story, it's like a Tchaikovsky ballet in that it's based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen but we've got the choreographer sorted out now."

He added: "We're going to be working on that across the year but we're touring so we probably won't get it really finished until the end of next year."

This could be awesome.  The boys have always had great visual sensibilities and they certainly have logged in the time making electronic music.  Ballet music doesn't have to be very complex, it just needs to be good.  It is vital the boys pick the right choreographer and eschew the prancing fairy stereotype.  If it was Erasure doing a ballet, they'd have bell-chiming synths and Andy skipping around in swan costume; that's the the stuff PSB must avoid!