Showman who leads a merry dance
LUNCH WITH THE FT: Matthew Bourne says bad-boy comparisons have got him wrong. Julia Llewellyn Smith hears the truth
Financial Times; Dec 8, 2001
By JULIA LLEWELLYN SMITH

The choreographer anddirector Matthew Bourne looks at the elderly clientele of the Mezzanine restaurant at the National Theatre and rolls his eyes.

"OAP matinee day," he giggles.

Bourne, a former filing clerk who did not set foot in a studio until he was 22, has been hailed as the saviour of British dance. His production of Swan Lake, with male swans, was seen by a million people worldwide and brought a young, mainstream audience to a languishing art form.

In person, ballet's enfant terrible is entirely unassuming: stocky, stiff-moving and dressed in a cardigan. "Am I drinking?" he asks in his soft voice, as he sits down. "Better not. Working." After a quick glance at the menu, he orders fish cakes and chips.

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Stuart adds: at one point Ms Smith writes, 'He talks fluently about his work, yet there is a sense of being on auto-pilot, his energies reserved for South Pacific.' Not really surprising when Ms Smith talks about his being a bad-boy and enfant terrible, which are comments of mind-boggling fatuity. I wonder if she has ever seen any of his work - it seemed to come as a surprise to her that his work is not considered ballet. I do wish newspapers would use dance critics for interviews. Hats off to the Telegraph who regularly let Ismene Brown do the interviews and it shows.

<small>[ 09 December 2003, 08:40 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

<B>BBC Radio4 ‘Front Row’ interview with Matthew Bourne</B><P><I>Front Row is a daily arts programme with a good reputation. Today they interviewed Matthew Bourne as ‘South Pacific’ with his choreography is performed at The National Theatre. Here I paraphrase the main points he made in the interview:</I><P><BR>I was always interested in dance, but mainly in musicals. I used to belong to a local song and dance club, but didn’t go to dance classes. It was only when I went to college to study dance as an academic discipline that I realised that I could have a career as a dancer/choreography. So, I had the advantage of having other interests. Some of my fellow students only knew dance, so their work was about dance. <P>To be fair, movement isn’t my forte, it’s telling stories through movement that I do best. I draw on a lot of sources and yes, I do steal a lot. Stravinsky was asked about stealing from Mozart and he said it was OK because he loved Mozart so much. ‘West Side Story’ is an influence on the Car Man, but anything danced in jeans looks like ‘West Side Story’.<P>Yes, I know that some people are dismissive of musicals and feel I may be under-selling myself. But I approach these works in the same way as my other work. I’m particularly drawn to musicals that don’t have a strong image already associated with them. I always try to make it look natural. I don’t want people be asking themselves, ‘Why that jump or that spin?’<P>Male frustration is a strong strand in ‘South Pacific’. I was working with non dancers and so for one of the scenes we did some improvisation at the start where I asked them to make love to an inanimate object. Some got rather embarressed! In the ‘Wash that man’ number the girls dance with towels which become a symbol for men when they throw them into a pile and strangle them.<P>‘My Fair Lady’ also presented a challenge, particularly in the ‘Ascot Races’ song. In the film it’s just a fashion parade with Californian models, very little movement and clever camera work. Clearly you couldn’t do that on stage. So I started playing around with ideas about the characters as rare creatures or horsey things to create something new. <P> <P> <BR> <BR><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited December 19, 2001).]

Another interview with Bourne in The Observer. He talks about his upcoming production at the National Theatre and his season of The Nutcracker at Sadlers Wells.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Question: what do you call a man who rehearses a company of dancers and stages Swan Lake in the West End and on Broadway and crosses Carmen with The Postman Always Rings Twice to create a sweaty dance-noir? Answer: a choreographer. The only trouble is, British dance's runaway success story Matthew Bourne isn't at all sure about the job title. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,754756,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Interview in The Telegraph.

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<small>[ 08-13-2002, 00:14: Message edited by: Joanne ]</small>

A merry dance
Matthew Bourne has three shows on the trot. Can he put a foot wrong?
By Allen Robertson for The Times.


WITH THREE HIT shows and more than 250 performances to oversee in the next 12 months, Matthew Bourne must be the busiest choreographer in Britain. This week Bourne’s New Adventures troupe begins an eight-week run of his Nutcracker! at Sadler’s Wells.

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<small>[ 09 December 2003, 08:40 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

'I'm a choreographer and I'm a director'
By Alastair Macaulay for The Financial Times


When Matthew Bourne was on the way up, it was generally accepted that what he did was choreography. When his 1995 Swan Lake became a huge success, however, dance critics began to say that he was not a choreographer but a director. The (sniffy) implication was that London is full of mere directors, whereas the world has few true choreographers. That Bourne was proficient at arranging a piece of theatre was not to be denied; but how efficient was he at making a dance?

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<small>[ 09 December 2003, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>