Living the fairy tale
Annabel Meggeson is entranced by ballet aficionado Matthew Bourne
Iget asked that all the time…” Poor Matthew Bourne – as if half a dozen internationally acclaimed ballet spectaculars weren’t enough, I’m asking him what he’ll be getting his teeth into next. The other thing he always gets asked? “When am I going to direct a movie! I’ve been offered some great things and certainly been to film studios and had the red carpet laid out, so to speak.” But the thing is, Bourne, 57, is a theatre boy. Born in east London, he grew up on his parents’ diet of musicals before embarking on
a “self-education” in classical ballet and opera in his late teens, which he loved. He won a place at a contemporary ballet school when he was 22, and formed his own dance troupe straight out of college, because he “loved performing”. Thirty years on, New Adventures (originally Adventures In Motion Pictures) is still going, and instead of “a small group of friends performing in small venues to small audiences”, it’s now one of the world’s most prolific ballet companies, sustaining unheard-of-for-ballet eight-week runs that keep coming back, and winning Bourne 35 international awards and a knighthood no less. The latest show to return to the London stage is Cinderella, which opens at Sadler’s Wells next month.
Today, we’re in a beautiful old studio space in east London, and while some of the dancers in his company limber up for their pictures, we wander away from the music and cameras to settle on a big leather sofa and talk more about the ballet. Bourne’s rather serious demeanour belies the gentle, down-to-earth, easy-tolaugh man I discover during the course of our conversation. His voice is soft but purposeful and his manner pure charm. No wonder everyone, as I find out when I talk to his publicist and the dancers later on, loves him.
BOURNE’S CINDERELLA IS A UNIQUE TAKE ON THE STORY,
set during World War II. Which isn’t exactly the cosiest subject for Christmas, I venture. “It’s a good title for Christmas and it uses the Prokofiev score, which was published in 1946, and I promise you, if you listen to it with the thought of that period in your head, it’s just like a film score from the ’40s,” says Bourne. “You can hear the sirens and the planes flying overhead and it actually really works as an idea. Because
Cinderella is actually about somebody going missing and the image of the shoe in the rubble is so strong.
The centrepiece is a bombed ballroom, based on what happened to the Café de Paris. Act Two opens with the bombed ballroom, total chaos, and it all goes backwards and rights itself. Things fly into place and people dance backwards. But ultimately, it’s a story about love.”
It sounds extraordinary, but then making audiences fall in love with the extraordinary and unexpected is
The centrepiece is a bombed ballroom. Things FLY into place and people DANCE backwards. It’s a story about LOVE
I remember WATCHING Anthony Dowell in Swan Lake and thinking, ‘What if the swans were MALE?’
exactly what Bourne’s all about. His talent is being able to see something
– a well-loved fairy tale or traditional ballet – from a different point of view. It’s what happened with his most famous piece of work, the all-male Swan Lake that debuted over 20 years ago and made Bourne the household name he is today.
WAS THERE A LIGHT-BULB MOMENT?
“I can remember more than one in a way. I had seen Swan Lake many times and I remember watching Anthony Dowell in it at The Royal Ballet, who played the prince in this way that was really yearning for something. And I’m thinking, ‘What if the swans were male?’ At the same time, the press was full of Charles, Diana and Camilla, and all the royal trouble that was going on with them
– a prince who couldn’t be with the person he loved. Then I was in St James’s Park one morning and saw Buckingham Palace with the swans in the foreground, and it all just seemed to add up.”
Swan Lake also yielded Bourne his partner of 20 years, Portuguese dancer and choreographer Arthur Pita, 46. “He was one of the swans.” They have a dog, Ferdinand, and live in London, as well as having a place in Brighton, where they like to escape to when they have a few days together. “Otherwise, Arthur’s very freelance and some weeks he has to go to San Francisco to do a piece and it’s a juggling act when we’re around.”
Christmas, though, will see them firmly together, tending their respective London-based ballets. (Pita will be doing his sixth year of The Little Match Girl, which Bourne touchingly describes as “magical”, at the Lilian Baylis theatre.) Bourne normally has the company round to his house on Boxing Day (evidence of the original “family feel” he says is retained, despite the size and success of it now), while Christmas Day will most likely see Bourne and Pita eat at local restaurant, Bellanger, which “is rather nice because you can take your dog”.
With that, Red’s creative director comes over – they’re ready for Bourne on set. As he walks on, Madonna is playing and he can’t help himself – a few taps and a wiggle before taking his place as serious-faced impresario among his troupe. But there he is – the boy who was passionate about performing, about music and about ballet. Still there, doing his thing.