“Choreographically and conceptually Highland Fling is where Swan Lake comes from,” says Will Kemp, who dances the male lead, James, at Sadler’s Wells from Friday. “It was here that Matt realised that he could make an audience not just laugh, but also cry.”

Highland Fling is based on La Sylphide, the oldest warhorse in the repertory and the prototypical Romantic ballet. Dating from 1832, the original is set in the Scottish Highlands. Bourne cannily updated Highland Fling to a contemporary Glasgow populated by party-hardy young adults who are into fighting, sex and substance abuse.

James is an unemployed welder on the verge of marrying his prim, smug girlfriend, Effie, but on his wedding day a sylph lures him away. In Bourne’s universe this otherworldly siren is no standard ethereal ballerina type. Instead, think Tinkerbell with a touch of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Bourne’s sylph is a naughty, grubby little punk savage presiding over a pack of similar beings of both sexes. Like her, they are sooty-eyed, creepy-cute creatures in raggedy garb. Bourne famously channeled the feral malevolence underpinning these quirky mischief-makers into his male swans.

Fling is mainly light-hearted but, like its source material, it carries a sting. Bourne has described the tale as an adultery fantasy, adding: “James is a crass man who tries to impose his possessive and destructive male desires upon his fantasies.”

“James tries to obtain the unobtainable in quite a barbaric way,” Kemp explains. “It brings everything to a dramatic halt and a very human reality.”

The trick, as Kemp learnt when he took on the role in the revival of Fling earlier this year, is to maintain audience sympathy. “James gets away with some horrendous behaviour. During rehearsals Matt kept reminding us that James is the hero, the person the audience has to hook into. He’d say: ‘Pull it back a bit, because we have to like you.’”

Fling is significant in that it was the first time that Bourne had worked with the designer Lez Brotherston, a collaboration that subsequently yielded not only Swan Lake but also such award-winning entertainments as Cinderella and The Car Man.

Brotherston’s plaid-mad council flat setting in Act One, a triumph of bad taste, gives way to the sylph’s trash-heap domain. Kemp applauds the balance struck between vibrant caricature and grit: “The brash costumes and fantastic set heighten how the characters walk, dance and act, and yet they become believable.”

Not long before Fling was due to open, Kemp was rushed to hospital after passing out during rehearsals. He had contracted a rare blood infection, an episode he regards ironically as a form of research for playing the drugged-up James. “I’ve never taken so many pills or had so many injections,” he laughs.

“Being in hospital can be a frightening place. At 3am, an old woman next to me was shouting, ‘Sylvia! Are you there?’ Amid such drug- induced and dramatic haziness, you have to keep a sense of humour. That’s a great way to describe Highland Fling.”

Highland Fling is at Sadler’s Wells, London EC1 (www.sadlerswells.com 0870-737 7737), Aug 26-Sep 3 For more dance, go to www.timesonline.co.uk/theknowledge/dance

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