In a huge, hot practice studio in Scottish Ballet's Glasgow headquarters, two dozen dancers are being talked through the closing passage of Highland Fling, the national company's latest offering – an adaptation of one of the world's oldest romantic ballets, La Sylphide.

As rehearsal directors Etta Murfitt and Mikah Smillie look on, New Orleans-born Owen Thorne stoops to pick up what look like an enormous pair of pinking shears – the means with which he will deprive soloist Bethany Kingsley-Garner of her wings.

She isn't currently wearing them – like her colleagues, she's dressed today in the familiar rehearsal studio garb of loose T-shirt and sweatpants – but come opening night they'll be powdered with fairy dust and fixed on to her back. Actually, make that sylph dust: Kingsley-Garner is one of the dancers playing the mythological sprite-like creature which gives the original ballet its title and with whom Thorne's character, James, falls in love.

In La Sylphide, James is a young Scottish farmer engaged to local girl Effie, and the Sylph visits him when he falls asleep by the fire one night. In Highland Fling, however, he's an unemployed Glasgow welder with a penchant for clubbing and for any and all of the narcotic pick-me-ups that go with that scene. He's still engaged to Effie, but this time he encounters the Sylph while slumped in a nightclub toilet – presumably the graffiti-covered plywood ensemble which is sitting outside the rehearsal studio waiting for its delivery to Glasgow's Theatre Royal, the first stop on Highland Fling's four-date Scottish tour. "Taggart is a faggot" is one of the few expletive-free offerings daubed above the realistic-looking urinals.

It's only 12 days until the ballet opens across town and tomorrow the man who created it nearly 20 years ago will arrive here to cast his eye over the (nearly) finished version.

The warmth or otherwise of the critics' response to Scottish Ballet's latest production can't yet be gauged, of course, but there's already much about it which is notable. For a start, it's an early taste of the vision, skill and taste of choreographer and former English National Ballet dancer Christopher Hampson, who took over as artistic director of the company in September. Second is the name of tomorrow's important visitor: Matthew Bourne. Third, and perhaps most important, is the fact that Bourne has never before let any other company perform one of his full-length ballets.

"It's the first time it's happened," says Hampson proudly. "Matthew's quite protective of his work – well, he's obviously really protective of it because he's never let any company other than his own perform full-length works like Swan Lake, Dorian Gray, The Car Man or Highland Fling. So yeah, it's a big deal and one that I'm really proud of for Scottish Ballet."

Beyond the artistic coup itself, however, Hampson thinks it's vital for Scotland's national company to have a work like this in its repertoire – in part to put bums on seats, but also because of the position its creator holds in the world of dance and the way in which he has shifted the perception of the artform.

"Matthew Bourne is probably the best known living choreographer we have in the UK," says Hampson. "His work's incredibly popular with audiences and he's really done a great service to dance in breaking down the barriers between the theatre-going audience for drama and for ballet."

La Sylphide was choreographed by Danish ballet master August Bournonville and premiered in Copenhagen in 1836 with music by Norwegian composer Herman Lovenskiold. Bourne turned to it as the basis for his Highland Fling when he first started casting around for a follow-up to Nutcracker!, the 1992 ballet he created for his company Adventures In Motion Pictures (since renamed New Adventures). At the time, he happened to be touring Scotland in a minibus and, inspired by the countryside, it didn't take him long to arrive at Bournonville's classic work.

Bourne's 1994 version kept the original score but updated the action to the post-rave world of early-1990s clubland. Hampson more or less keeps it there, which is why Bourne has instructed the dancers to watch Trainspotting as part of their research.

Hampson says: "It's about going out on a Friday night, getting tanked up with your mates, and the fact that the original score is used takes away the problems of the music going out of date."

That said, he doesn't want audiences to think they're coming to see Trainspotting en pointe. "They're not. But I think Matthew wanted the cast to be aware of the characters who populated the culture at that time – the way they speak, the way they move, the hardness of the men and the women. That obviously doesn't come naturally to ballet dancers, so it was important that they understood that physicality."

Hampson got the top job at Scottish Ballet in part because he came to his interview with a handful of innovations and ideas on which he knew he could press "go" at any time. Chief among them was this production of Highland Fling, for which Bourne had already given verbal consent. But one of Hampson's other main aims was to "lever out the walls of the repertoire", as he puts it, by finding and working with new talent.

"I think we can engage with a lot more choreographers and that's probably best illustrated by our presence at the [Edinburgh International] Festival," he says. "We're doing four days and an enormously ambitious programme of work."

He's not wrong. Under the umbrella title of Dance Odysseys, Scottish Ballet is presenting a series of performances using the company's own dancers as well as those from Scottish Dance Theatre. There is a world premiere by Edouard Lock, founder and artistic director of the group La La La Human Steps; a version of modernist classic The Rite Of Spring which keeps Igor Stravinsky's score but adds new choreography by Hampson himself; and pieces by both veteran and up-and-coming choreographers.

Notable among the first group are Christopher Bruce, Peter Darrell and Jiri Kylian, mainstay of Edinburgh International Festival favourites Nederlands Dans Theater.

Among the second group, Hampson is particularly excited about the work of James Cousins, "a wonderful new choreographer" and an alumnus of Bourne's New Adventures company, for whom he recently danced in a 3D version of Swan Lake filmed at Sadler's Wells theatre in London.

Beyond the Festival, Hampson has other ambitions for the company – ones which may not only throw new choreographic voices into the mix but new performance spaces too.

"The great thing about Glasgow is the amount of fantastic buildings there are," he says. "We have Tramway on our doorstep, which I'm hoping to engage with a little more readily, but we're very open to working in a variety of spaces."

And, he adds cryptically: "There are a couple of things in the pipeline which will see us performing in some slightly alternative forums."

Before then, of course, there are scissors to be sharpened, wings to be dusted and a Highland Fling to be flung.