Baz Luhrmann and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell have announced that the stage musical of the iconic Australian film Strictly Ballroom will have its world premiere and first run in Sydney at the Lyric Theatre from September 2013.

A worldwide cinema hit, Strictly Ballroom re-ignited interest in ballroom dancing both in Australia and internationally. “Producers in London and New York have been pursuing the rights for Strictly Ballroom for many years. It is a major theatrical coup that Sydney has secured the premiere ahead of Broadway and the West End,” Mr O’Farrell said.

“Securing the Strictly Ballroom premiere demonstrates Sydney’s re-emergence as the number one city for first run musicals in Australia,” he continued.

Originally devised in Sydney at NIDA, creator Baz Luhrmann said the decision to premiere Strictly Ballroom in Sydney was a natural one for a quintessentially Australian story with global appeal.

Mr Luhrmann said: “Of all of my shows, Strictly Ballroom is the most personal. From escaping into the world of competitive ballroom dancing as a child, and my mother going on to be a dance teacher, through to the formative moment at the National Institute of Dramatic Art when a group of talented students and I brought together the classical myth of triumph over oppression and placed it in this world of suburban theatre, the first production of Strictly Ballroom was born.”