Pet Shop Boys to compose ballet

The Pet Shop Boys are heading in a new musical direction - they are composing a stage ballet.

The duo, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe - want to pen a ballet score featuring "electronics and strings".

Frontman Tennant based the show upon a story by fairytale novelist Hans Christian Andersen - and hopes it will be finished by the end of 2010.

He says: "It's quite a big project. There's a lot of music to write but we've written half-an-hour of it and we've done a bit of a workshop with them.

"It's got a story, it's like a Tchaikovsky ballet in that it's based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen but we have got the choreographer sorted out now.

"We're going to be working on that across the year but we're touring so won't get it really finished until the end of next year."