BRITAIN’S favourite Gallic sex siren, the actress Juliette Binoche, is taking up a new challenge to dance on the London stage at an age when most dancers have already hung up their pumps.

Binoche, 43, who has won over British audiences with her luminous performances in such films as The English Patient and Chocolat, is the first to admit that she is not twinkle-toed. She has no previous training in dance.

But she said: “I’m in the mood now to do something I don’t yet know how to do. We all have possibilities within us.”

The actress will appear at the National theatre in the autumn of 2008 performing a contemporary dance work by Akram Khan, the 32-year-old choreographer.

Khan said that, despite her age and lack of experience, he had no doubt Binoche would succeed.

“She has been training a lot in the past year and I have no doubts of what she can achieve,” said Khan, who created a temple dance routine for Kylie Minogue’s comeback tour.

“From seeing her in some films such as Damage and Three Colours Blue I knew she had an ability not to be afraid of taking on demanding roles, and that she has a very lithe body which is very much in tune with movement and music. Her body has great expression.”

Binoche took part in a noted sex scene with Jeremy Irons in Damage, a 1992 movie about obsession in which Irons plays an MP who falls in love with his son’s fiancée.

It led to admiring glances from unusual quarters: François Mitterrand, the late French president, once chatted her up in a bookshop and later confided to a journalist that he dreamt of kissing her.

Khan and Binoche say they are keen to create a dance that looks at the symbolism of angels and how they are regarded in different cultures.

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