Christopher Gattelli could have danced all night when Julie Andrews approached him.

When Dame Julie Andrews asked Christopher Gattelli to choreograph the 60th anniversary production of Lerner and Loewe’s musical My Fair Lady, which she was to direct at the Sydney Opera House, he was so excited he couldn’t believe his bloomin’ luck.

“Oh my God! It was one of the top three highlights of my career,” says the Tony Award-winning choreographer from New York.

“I had worked with Julie before on a production here in the States called The Great American Mousical. It’s based on a book that she and her daughter wrote. That was turned into a musical so I met her on that and we got along great. And so when she asked me to do My Fair Lady with her, that was too good to be true.”

Andrews, of course, was the original Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 Broadway production and wanted to essentially recreate that version so that audiences could experience the show pretty much as it was when it was first staged.

Produced by Opera Australia and John Frost, the production featured Oliver Smith’s original set...