By Ian MacKenzie

EDINBURGH (Reuters Life!) - British choreographer Matthew Bourne's dance theatre update of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is expected to tour internationally next year after a sell-out run at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Officials at the world's biggest annual arts festival said ticket demand for Dorian Gray, which ends a week-long run on Saturday at the King`s Theatre, had been the highest in the festival's 61-year history.

Bourne, a 48-year-old Londoner, first came to the Edinburgh festival in 1992 with an adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Nutcraker. He is also known for his adaptation of Swan Lake, with all-male swans.

Oscar Wilde's dark late 19th century novella centres on a louche young man, Dorian Gray, whose aging process is transferred to a portrait in the attic. Bourne adapted the story for a 21st century celebrity era with the young Dorian Gray a male bi-sexual model in the photographic age.

Celebrities, drugs, sex, homoeroticism, murder -- it's all there, with all Bourne's characteristic energy and imagination, an ingenuous stage setting by Lez Brotherston and music still being adapted five weeks before the opening by Terry Davies.

Is it satire or parable? "A parable is closer to it, and a cautionary tale that sort of fits up modern celebrity," Bourne told Reuters.

"When I started looking into it, that wasn't the intention to go so far in the direction of what it's like to be turned into a famous person, to be a celebrity of sorts. I know I wanted to set it in the world of photography, I thought the links were very strong there and it would have that contemporary feel."

"But the more stories that were coming out about celebrities...I thought this is people being put into extraordinary situations and things happen to them, things change them, and often they can become monsters. So it became more and more relevant�."

Reviews in the British press have been mixed, but Bourne said a number of international presenters attending the festival -- including from Russia, New York, Los Angeles and Paris -- had seen the opening and "all said they wanted the piece -- that means there's a future for it."

Bourne said Dorian Gray would run for two weeks from next Monday at London's Sadlers Wells theatre, and he expected to tour internationally next year.

He hoped his next original production would not be three years away:

"I think I would like to try to do new work a little bit more regularly, at least every two years if not every year... I've got an idea for a piece using the music of Bernard Herrmann (who composed film scores for Alfred Hitchcock, among others), that's one of my thoughts for the future."

(Editing by Matthew Jones)