You’ll never see Matthew Bourne judging Strictly Come Dancing, and I’ll tell you why. “It’s the pressure of looking good every Saturday night,” the choreographer sighs. “They all look so pristine.”

It’s true that he doesn’t dress to impress - Bourne is a man of soft grey and subdued navy, neat but comfortable. Even edging into gilt-edged Claridge’s (“This is a bit posh, isn’t it?”), he wears his status as Britain’s most successful modern choreographer with endearing modesty. Nonetheless, the success is undeniable. His shows capture international audiences by telling classic stories with a twist - cheeky, accessible, but with a powerful emotional undertow. Swan Lake’s feral male swans and the sugar-rush fantasia of Nutcracker! have become icons of modern British dance.

Last year, he celebrated 20 years making dance. His career began with spry, short pieces and culminated in 1995 with the devouring triumph of Swan Lake. With his New Adventures company, Bourne scrubs up his existing work while adding new hits, and they are constantly touring, with longer London seasons. Works such as Edward Scissorhands (2005) defied lukewarm reviews, and even unlikely material has triumphed, notably the exhilaratingly complex Play Without Words (2002), steeped in very British tales of class and grubby sex, which played eight weeks on Broadway. Welcome to theBourne supremacy.

Bourne’s new show will be a highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Festival - and, if all goes to plan, of the international dance circuit for some time to come. Dorian Gray is an updated version of Oscar Wilde’s novel, and, as Bourne says, has “been on my list of things to do”. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) was the novel that did for Wilde. It was cited at his trial as the virtual confession of a man in thrall to private passions. Young, gorgeous Dorian is immortalised in a portrait that takes on the visible signs of his depravity while he himself remains untouched by time and crime. A classic story of the divided self, it nails the hopeless desire to feast with panthers and somehow escape unscathed.

Why has the story been sitting on Bourne’s to-do list? “It’s not really got any sympathetic characters - that worried me a bit,” he says. “But I’ll try and get some sympathy into it, someone who is corrupted by the life he’s led into.” He is setting it in the present day - so, where do you find a contemporary Dorian? “I’m trying to find modern parallels. The obsession with youth and wanting to look young has never been a bigger issue. And I’m interested in what happens to people when the camera is turned on them. People you wouldn’t look at suddenly become fascinating.” Instead of being captured by a portrait-painter, Dorian will be immortalised by an edgy photographer, possibly as the face of a fragrance. (“I think it should be called Immortal”). What happens to the poster boy for purity? “I don’t have all the answers yet.” When I last met Bourne, he seemed diffident, but today he chats happily. Perhaps the sense of a production taking shape in his imagination encourages his yeasty enthusiasm. “It’s all about story at this point, about getting the beats right,” he explains. With Dorian Gray, this involves devising scenarios that are psychologically tantalising and might trigger dance. “An older woman and a younger man, say. I see potential there. It’s a scene that could become dance.”

The older woman doesn’t figure in the book, but Bourne was chary of what he saw as the novel’s misogyny. Wilde’s hero falls for a pallid actress, but, Bourne suggests, “in the novel, there’s nothing that leads you to believe he has any real interest in women”. He even considered an all-male version before coming up with the kind of fraught bisexual triangle that has previously jangled in Swan Lake or The Car Man. Dorian’s corrupting mentor is Lord Henry Wotton, an armchair sinner who spills out epigrams. “I thought of making him a politician, perhaps someone quite flamboyant being reborn as a sober David Cameron figure.” Instead, he reinvented Lord Henry as the alluring Lady Henrietta, “an art benefactor, perhaps, or the lowest form of fashion editor”.

It is story, rather than dance, that snags his attention. He doesn’t work out ideas on his own - he was never a good enough dancer, he confesses. Instead, movement develops with dancers. “I’m a reactor, I need people to play around,” he says. “I’m constantly worried that I haven’t got enough ideas. But I do have little brain-waves where I think ‘Yes’, and never waver from that.”

In rehearsal, Bourne builds a library of movies so the cast can tap into his influences. Hitchcock and classic Brit flicks informed his early work, while for the sweaty, raunchy Car Man it was steamy film noir such as The Postman Always Rings Twice (and, latterly, Brokeback Mountain, to encourage the guys to go for the snogging). So, what will feed Dorian Gray? There’s American Psycho (for 1980s sheen and inner depravity), Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine, and scads of Almodovar (“They’re very bisexual in all the relationships”). Television dramas such as The Line of Beauty and Party Animals shape Bourne’s sense of British politics - tickled by ambition and destabilised by desire. “The power of beauty affects everything,” he says. “It cuts across class, across politics.”

It is interesting to watch the effect of a Bourne show on an audience. The work gives spectators permission to engage, to be sucked in by story. “The audience takes it to another level,” he says. “I’m always surprised at the reaction - they always like little moments that we thought nobody would notice.” Dorian, he thinks, will offer “a challenge to do something darker. We’re trying to work outside our comfort zone. I’ve been encouraged by the way the audiences have come with us. That was proved with Play Without Words - we can do something that’s not a famous dance piece, but they’ll come to see what we’re doing next”.

If the piece doesn’t quite work first time, he should get a chance to tinker. Bourne enjoys revisiting his back catalogue, sending out shows stronger and sharper. “That’s what I really love,” he says. “The bigger beats are there, so it’s all about the detail. You do choreograph better second time. It becomes so much richer. Most choreographers are not that interested in reviving work. I’m the exception.”

Bourne has grown a big business (in dance terms, admittedly), which doesn’t happen by accident. Politely, he gives me an apologetic warning at the start of the interview that he’ll probably have a little rant about funding, and indeed he does. It’s the only time this modest man sounds aggrieved, as he argues: “I don’t feel the dance press really understands the company. We get nice reviews, but I don’t feel they understand the phenomenon of it – the lengths of our runs, the new people who come to dance, the tours in Asia, Australia, the States. We’re the biggest dance export this country has, by far.” And don’t get him started on bureaucrats intent on ticking boxes: “It’s like watching the office junior doing the Cosmo quiz.” In funding terms, they are victims of their own success. “I talk to a lot of people who think we’re rolling in money. But we’re really quite small – there’s not even someone in the office every day.”

So, he isn’t in it for the money or the fame: “I’ve never been interested in celebrity. Everything I do is to promote the shows.” Although grooming anxieties meant he refused the call from Strictly Come Dancing, he is a devoted fan, arguing that the show has fostered a popular dance audience. (He will also co-direct the West End production of Oliver!, which finds its stars via the BBC’s I’d Do Anything.) “People now realise the skill of dance, but also the pleasure of it,” he says. “It’s so genuine - people have learnt to do something. It’s real. I get tears in my eyes.”

Dorian Gray previews at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, Aug 14-16, then premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival, Aug 22-30; it tours to Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Sept 2-14; Theatre Royal Norwich, Sept 16-20; and Theatre Royal Newcastle, Sept 23-27

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