IT is just over a decade since Rose Goddard took her first tentative steps into the world of dance as a Glasgow schoolgirl.

Next week, she will be back in the city in her favourite theatre, with her dream company, and she admits life feels good.

“It’s really great to be coming to Glasgow on the tour, I’m looking forward to it,” she smiles. “I went to school in the city, and trained there – I’ll always have that connection.

“It will be a very different experience, though.”

She laughs: “I’m a dancing marshmallow, for a start!”

Rose, now 22, is coming to the King’s Theatre in Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker!

A colourful, irreverent version of the classic story, repackaged and reinvented for its 30th anniversary tour, three decades on from its spectacular debut by Bourne’s New Adventures company in Edinburgh in 1992.

Nutcracker! follows Clara’s bittersweet journey from a darkly comic Christmas Eve at Dr Dross’s Orphanage, through a shimmering, ice-skating winter wonderland to the scrumptious candy kingdom of Sweetieland, all with Tchaikovsky’s glorious score and Bourne’s dazzling choreography.

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It is a dream come true for Rose, who admits she very nearly did not take up her place at the Dance School of Scotland in 2011.

“I didn’t want to go,” she says. “We lived in the Highlands, and I was all set to go to the local high school with my friends. But I’d been dancing since I was little and my parents saw I might have a little talent for it. They really pushed me to take the opportunity and it was life-changing. I owe them a lot.”

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She adds: “It was a lot to take at first. My school in Laggan, near Inverness, had 26 pupils and Knightswood Secondary, where the Dance School of Scotland is based, had 1500. Every week we’d come down on the Sunday, and go home on the Friday.

“It was knackering too – a normal, busy school day with all the academic subjects, then three hours of dance until 6pm. But I put my heart and soul into it, and I loved it.”

Rose was “100 percent classical ballet”, she says, until she successfully gained a place at the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

“The BA in Modern Ballet opened my eyes to different styles of ballet, and I loved the contemporary work – I found it a freer way of moving,” says Rose, whose impressive CV since has included a tour of Wee Hansel and Gretel with Scottish Ballet, Cats at the King’s in Glasgow, and Ballet West’s Scottish tour of The Nutcracker. “I was always an academic dancer, concentrating on passing exams, so touring was new and exciting for me. And then, with New Adventures, I landed my dream company.”

In 2019, Rose made her professional debut in Bourne’s double Olivier-award-winning The Red Shoes as Nadia – and then everything stopped because of Covid.

“It was just incredible, I was loving it and we were all set for the UK and international tour,” she explains. “When the pandemic hit, I think I was in denial to begin with. I just thought it would shut down for a few months and then life would go back to normal.

“It wasn’t like that at all. Not performing for so long has been really tough.”

Rose adds, fervently: “I missed it so much. I worked in Tesco for six months, because I had to get a job, but I kept training. All I wanted to do was get back to it.

“It made me realise just how much I love dancing.”

Nutcracker! is at the King’s Theatre from February 22 to 26.