Natalia Osipova's past repertoire reads like a roll call of history, myth and fiction's most complicated, troubled women. There was Medusa in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's eponymous ballet and Anna Anderson (the woman who believed she was the long lost Grand Russian Duchess) in Kenneth MacMillan's Anastasia. She even brought to life the spectre of Amy Winehouse in Arthur Pita's tragic, sensual Run Mary Run.

Now Osipova has turned her attention to one of theatre's darkest-hearted femme fatales in a new contemporary version of Carmen by Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman, which is about to make its world premiere in Edinburgh. It was Osipova's husband, dancer Jason Kittelberger, who first introduced her to Veldman, and once the idea of a modern-day Carmen had been floated, it was impossible to resist.

'Of course, I always dreamed of Carmen,' Osipova says over Zoom from her house in London. Alongside her sits Kittelberger, who co-stars in the production as Don José, while in the background one of their dogs occasionally barks. Osipova had played Carmen before, in classical interpretations, but had always felt it wasn't really for her. 'Sometimes you understand the role, but the steps and choreography aren't working for you well. I thought maybe later I'd come back for Carmen.'

In Veldman's interpretation, she found a character she could relate to. 'We have a double story,' she says. 'I play an actress playing the role of Carmen. She is famous and she is lonely and tired,' she laughs, 'like me, sometimes.' The piece tells the story of a team of filmmakers, making a movie of Bizet's Carmen. When we catch glimpses of the troupe backstage, however, their own complicated relationships echo those of the story they're telling. A new score, by composer Dave Price, has been created to reflect the melding of modern and classical, and real and fictional, drawing on Bizet but segueing into contemporary sounds when you least expect it. It's a piece intended to surprise those who come having swotted up on the dark and dramatic opera.

'What's nice with Didy is that she can play between the dramatic feeling and the darkness, but then the lightness at the same time,' adds Kittelberger. Some of this lightness is manifested in the way the 'actors' play up the relationships between their 'characters' onscreen. Having Osipova and Kittelberger portray the piece's doomed lovers adds an extra layer of meta. But while it must be a bonus for the real-life couple to be working together, the fictional relationship between Carmen and Jose isn't always a nice one. Carmen mocks and humiliates Jose, and eventually abandons him for a torero. How has that been going?

'She's comfortable with the role, let's put it that way,' Kittelberger laughs before Osipova states bluntly, 'I'm naturally bossy. I have such strong opinions about what I want to do. I'm always friendly, but not everybody wants to play his role how I want, and sometimes there's conflict.' In the past, some male counterparts haven't had the stomach to match her intense ideas, but Osipova has always been drawn beyond technique to find emotional truth in a role. In Carmen, it seems, she is in her element. 'If you feel right, your body never lies. It's like emotion and technique working together, and that for me is art. Real dance art.'

Carmen, Pleasance @ EICC, Edinburgh, Friday 17 & Saturday 18 December.