Victoria leads a merry dance from Leeds to the West End

But as the world marks her bicentenary next year, audiences, first in Leeds and then across the country, will see her life played out on stage as never before.

Northern Ballet has chosen today (May 24), Victoria’s 199th birthday, to unveil details of one of its most ambitious productions – an epic dance that tells her story through the eyes of her daughter and companion, Beatrice.

Believed to be the first time the late Queen’s life has been represented as a ballet, it is the work of the choreographer and director Cathy Marston, who was also responsible for the company’s version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

The production will have its premiere at the company’s home base of the Grand Theatre next March, before going to Sheffield, the West End and on tour.

Ballet was a minor attraction in Victorian Britain and the Queen was not noted for her patronage of the arts, but her life story made her irresistible as a subject, said David Nixon, artistic director of Northern Ballet.

“It was part of an original idea I had of doing a ballet on each of the three significant Queens in the history of England, which would have been Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II,” he said.

Deciding that a three-queen ballet would have been “overkill”, he fell for the fascination of Victoria’s life journey.

“A lot happened to her functionally, in terms of Industrial Revolution, but at the same time she led a romantic personal life. She was quite passionately in love with her husband and then had these other relationships with men during her latter years.”

The story fitted with his company’s ambition to tell “women’s stories in women’s voices”.

It will begin on the Queen’s death bed, as Beatrice revisits her memories of her mother as a secluded widow, before discovering her anew as she transcribes the volumes of intimate diaries that had been left behind.

They trace Victoria’s challenging relationship with her mother, the truth about her marriage to Prince Albert, and her ambiguous relationship with John Brown, her manservant from Scotland.

FILMING BEGAINS FOR TV SERIES

Northern Ballet’s announce­ment comes as filming begins in Yorkshire on the third series of ITV’s drama about Victoria, with Jenna Coleman in the title role. One of the locations is Harewood House, near Leeds, where dancers posed for preview pictures.

Mr Nixon said: “I think it will be a significant production.

“There is a fascination with Victoria, partly because of the TV series, but also generally, and dance brings a different perspective to it. I think people will be really quite fascinated to see what dance can do with the story.”