Creative Team
Matthew Bourne
Co-Director and Choreographer
Matthew Bourne is hailed as the UK's most popular and successful choreographer/ director. He is the creator of the world's longest-running ballet production, a five-time Olivier Award-winner, and the only British director to have won the Tony Award for both Best Choreographer and Best Director of a Musical.
Matthew started training to be a dancer at the comparatively late age of 22. He studied dance theatre and choreography at the Laban Centre, graduating in 1985, but spending a further year with the college's performance company, Transitions. Matthew danced for 14 years, creating many roles in his own work. In 1999 his final performance was as The Private Secretary in Swan Lake on Broadway.
Matthew was the artistic director of his first company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, from 1987 until 2002; it became the UK's most innovative and popular dance/theatre company, creating an enormous new audience for dance with its groundbreaking work including Highland Fling, Spitfire, Swan Lake, Cinderella and The Car ManI.
In 2002 Matthew launched New Adventures, with two highly successful productions. Play Without Words premiered in the NT's Transformation Season (Best Entertainment Olivier Award). It toured worldwide and premiered in New York, Los Angeles and Moscow in 2005. Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker! also premiered at Sadler's Wells in 2002 and became an instant hit. It became the first ballet to be screened by BBC1 in over 20 years and also embarked on a world tour. Last year saw New Adventures' acclaimed revival of one of Bourne's most popular works, the 'Romantic wee ballet' Highland Fling, and Matthew's tenth anniversary production of Swan Lake also continued its tour, making a triumphant debut in Paris and an extensive tour of the USA. In 2005 New Adventures presented its most ambitious project to date. Matthew Bourne's production of Edward Scissorhands, based on Tim Burton's classic film, received its premiere at Sadler's Wells. After breaking box office records over an 11-week season, it began a 14-week British tour before dates in Asia, the USA and Europe.
Matthew has also created choreography for several major revivals of classic musicals including Cameron Mackintosh's productions of Oliver! (1994) and My Fair Lady (2002, UK tour 2005-06) as well as the National Theatre's revival of South Pacific (2002). Together with Stephen Mear he won an Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer for Mary Poppins.
He has collaborated on projects with leading directors Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre, Sam Mendes, Yukio Ninagawa and John Caird and has created dances and roles for performers Jonathan Pryce, Lynn Seymour, Dawn French, Adam Cooper, Julie Walters and Martine McCutcheon.
Film work includes TV productions of his stage work Swan Lake (Emmy nomination), The Car Man and Nutcracker! - and original work such as the John Betjamin inspired Late Flowering Lust with Sir Nigel Hawthorne and his own AMP company.
Matthew was the subject of a South Bank Show in 1997 and in 1999 he presented C4's Dance 4 series. The C4 documentary Bourne To Dance, which he also presented, was broadcast on Christmas Day 2001. His production of Swan Lake is featured in Stephen Daldry's hit film Billy Elliot.
Matthew Bourne has twice been nominated as Best Director at the Olivier Awards and his achievements in choreography have been recognised with over 30 international awards including the Evening Standard Award, South Bank Show Award, Time Out Award and the Astaire Award for Dance on Broadway. In the 2001 New Year's Honours, Matthew was awarded an OBE for services to dance and in 2003 he received the prestigious Hamburg Shakespeare Prize for the Arts.
Future plans include the Broadway production of Mary Poppins at the New Amsterdam Theatre from November.
www.new-adventures.net | www.matthewbourne.org
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