But it represents a departure for the company in bringing in a guest choreographer to create a full-length production for the first time.

Cathy Marston is Director of Bern Ballet in Switzerland and was previously an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House and toured the UK with her own company, The Cathy Marston Project.

"David (Nixon – NBT's artistic director) had seen my treatment of Ibsen's Ghosts at the Royal Opera House and we had talked for a long time about me doing a full-scale work for the company after choreographing Dividing Silence, part of a triple bill, in 2004," she explains.

"NBT do big shows and it's a big risk. One of the reasons I think I was asked is that dancers like working with different choreographers and I think David thought that I would create a style that was more contemporary than perhaps what he does. For example, we have some dancers barefoot and others on point which I think makes it more interesting for the dancers and the audience as well."

There was considerable discussion about the choice of work to perform.

"NBT get less funding than any of the other companies and have to have a title that sells, something that people recognise," says Marston.

While A Tale of Two Cities fits that criterion, Dickens' dense and complicated epic novel would not seem an obvious choice to translate to ballet.

"To me it was," she asserts. "It was not so much the book but the film which I remember seeing when I was very young and the love story in it stayed with me.

"I am very passionate about narrative drama and what appealed to me about A Tale of Two Cities was the duality of the story, the opposites and the doubling. It suggested a framework to hang things from.

The setting also suggested very vibrant colours, the reds of blood and uniforms of the French Revolution contrasting to what was happening in England at the time."

But surely the film was in black and white? "Yes, isn't that funny, but it was very colourful in my imagination."

She researched the period to capture a sense of London. "Some of the ways of portraying the city have been tongue-in-cheek such as the solicitor's office with all the old buffers up against the young generation. We also have a scene in a park in London and they have a picnic which seems a very English thing to do and was very fashionable at that time, although the concept of the picnic had just been introduced from France. And, of course, we have to make it rain in England."

Marston's interpretation of Dickens' literary masterpiece focuses on the relationship between the three central characters, Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette, whose lives are inextricably caught up in the French Revolution, and explores the central themes of fate, redemption, sacrifice and revenge.

"A lot of the story has been streamlined with Marquis de St Evrémonde who is the real baddie, if you like, who is Charles's uncle in the book, we have made him his father. And in the original he rapes Madame Defarge's sister, but we have it happen to Madame Defarge herself. It's to simplify things.

She is in her second spell working in Switzerland and has found there are different audience demands in the two countries.

"I am going to do Wuthering Heights next year and I know if I were doing it in Britain, especially the North of England, there would be strong views of how it should be done in terms of style. Over here they want things to be reconceived and do not want traditional costumes.

What I care passionately about is telling the story of human relationships through dance it doesn't matter too much about what costumes they are wearing.

"That said, I didn't feel I wanted to change the location of A Tale of Two Cities in terms of time or geography that serves the themes of sacrifice and revenge and redemption."

- A Tale of Two Cities is at the Lyceum from Tuesday to Saturday.

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