The innovative choreographer discusses why dance shows are for everyone ahead of the broadcast premiere of Sleeping Beauty, which has been given a supernatural twist.
“Christmas is always busy for me,” British choreographer Matthew Bourne tells me down the phone prior to a performance of Edward Scissorhands. His magical productions are a festive staple, whether they’re on at the theatre – his company New Adventures is performing their seven-week Christmas season at London’s Sadler’s Wells for the 21st consecutive year with the aforementioned show – or on television. This Christmas, it’s the broadcast premiere of his 2012 ballet Sleeping Beauty, filmed earlier this year at Sadler’s Wells.
Bourne usually has what he calls his “big idea” of how he’s going to change a piece. For instance, 1992’s Nutcracker! begins in an orphanage rather than a grand house and 1995’s Swan Lake is made up of mainly male dancers. For Sleeping Beauty, his third Tchaikovsky ballet, he struggled initially with what to do with it, until he landed on the idea of vampires.
We’re first introduced to Princess Aurora (Ashley Shaw) as a baby in the late Edwardian era and follow her as she grows up and falls in love with Leo (Andrew Monaghan). When she’s cursed to sleep for 100 years by the wicked fairy Carabosse, Leo becomes immortal as a vampire to make sure he’ll be there when she wakes up in the present day.
“I’m not anti-classical ballet. I enjoy it myself, but this is a different interpretation of this incredible music,” Bourne says. “The classical Sleeping Beauty can coexist with this one, they’re both really good!”
Since 1986, Bourne has created 13 full-length productions, as well as short works. In 2001, he was awarded the OBE for Services to Dance, and received a Knighthood in 2016. Although his work, where he reinterprets stories, gender-swaps roles (male dancer Ben Brown plays the female Carabosse and her son Caradoc in Sleeping Beauty) and features same-sex pairings, is widely accepted now, when Swan Lake first premiered, he remembers how it was viewed as scandalous.
“It felt exciting at the time. We knew it was pushing the boundaries, especially because the world of dance and ballet was very sort of staid at that point. I was called the bad boy of ballet and all these sorts of stupid things,” he chuckles.
He’s still reaching new audiences all the time, especially with his productions being aired on TV. “We’re all for reaching as many people as possible. There are many reasons why people can’t get to a live show – either they can’t afford it, they can’t travel or it’s too far away.”
If you’re unsure whether his non-traditional version of Sleeping Beauty is for you, he says you should just give it a try. “It may not be what you expect, and that’s the wonder of it. It may draw you in, you may find a new love in your life.”
The 63-year-old was born in Hackney, London and grew up in Walthamstow, where he watched musicals on TV – including The Band Wagon, Singin’ in the Rain and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – and his parents frequently took him to the cinema.
The first dance film he saw on TV was The Red Shoes, which he adapted into a ballet in 2016. “That seemed such a weird, wonderful, eccentric, glamorous world,” the self-confessed “film buff” says. “I was also drawn to the idea of having a company that met together to produce beautiful things. That had a real effect on me, because that’s what I do now with New Adventures.” Bourne established Adventures in Motion Pictures in 1987, which then went on to become New Adventures in 2001.
He adds: “I’m a great film lover, and I’m always happy in that world. It’s given me an enormous amount of imagery and ideas that I’ve put into the dance pieces. I’d be lost without all that imagery going around in my head. It’s been there my whole life.”
Bourne, who’s a massive Alfred Hitchcock fan, says it might seem obvious, but people are always surprised when he tells them that Swan Lake has elements of The Birds in it. Sleeping Beauty borrows from Interview with the Vampire, of course, and Bourne was inspired by the Fred and Ginger film The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle for the dance craze scenes during the Edwardian part of the ballet.
He also recommends films to inspire his dancers to understand their character and performance – A Streetcar Named Desire and Rebel Without a Cause often make the list. “Dancers are mostly not trained actors, so I can say to them, ‘Go watch Marlon Brando in this or Grace Kelly in that.’ I’d never say to an actor, ‘Go watch this actor to learn how to act,’” he says.
Although Bourne’s parents didn’t have much money – his mother was a secretary and his father worked for Thames Water – they also took him to see shows in the West End whenever they could in the cheap seats of the balcony. “I didn’t dream of being downstairs in the stalls – it was no less thrilling for me. I just loved it.”
He continues: “When I see empty seats in the upper part of a theatre, it annoys me a bit, because people want to sit only in what they see as the best seats now. It’s a shame, because you can be right at the top and still have an experience that’s life-changing. That is what happened to me.
“It’s very important that there’s equality of access. Sometimes it’s up to you to seek it out yourself and sit in the cheap seats. I always say to my dancers, ‘Look up, make sure we include those people up there, don’t forget they’re there.’”
When Bourne was 18, the first ballet he saw was Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells. How would his younger self react if he told him that his productions would be staged at the very same venue? “It would be inconceivable that I would be doing what I’m doing now.
“I went along as a whim for self-education. I was into looking at things that I’d never tried before to see if I liked it. It was a whole evening of no dialogue, and that was a revelation. That was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with how to tell a story without words.” Bourne went on to create Play Without Words in 2002, taking inspiration from the 1963 film The Servant, which examines the British class system.
He didn’t start dance classes until he was 22, which would be considered late by a lot of people in the industry. His parents didn’t know anything about dance, but they loved music and performance and fostered his passion for it, something he now wants to share with audiences. It’s clear that Bourne’s productions are designed to include everyone.
“I’m conscious that the audience often feel that dance is not something they’re going to get, that it’s a language that’s really mysterious and not something they can easily follow. They might have been brought by someone to a show, and they need a bit of winning over,” he says.
What’s his solution to break the ice? Humour. “Often in my pieces, the earlier part of the show has some humour in it, and then they tend to get more serious or moving or tragic as they go along. As the second half starts, there’s a little bit of something lighter or humorous that relaxes people again. I want people to feel included, enjoy it and feel it’s for them. That’s why I do it.”
In Sleeping Beauty, the playful baby Aurora, a puppet operated by the dancers, certainly steals the show almost as soon as it starts as she climbs the curtains and refuses to take her medicine.
As well as adapting novels, including Lord of the Flies and Romeo and Juliet, and films into dance productions, Bourne also choreographed the musical Mary Poppins with Stephen Mear. The key was to not replicate the source material, but to instead look at the books and come up with new ideas – just as he did for The Red Shoes and Edward Scissorhands.
“A lot of film recreations on stage are too similar to the film and feel they’ve failed if they don’t recreate the film. I think it’s a bit lazy,” he says. “A film is a film and a stage show is a theatrical experience. If you take a famous movie… I don’t want to name any, but you know the ones I mean… you do have to give people what they love about that piece, but you don’t want to change it to the point where they don’t recognise it. Within that structure, you can give people some surprises and take it to places that the film doesn’t.”
I ask Bourne what he’d love to take on next and he says, “I’ve done most of the famous ballets, so looking to film seems to be a more obvious route to find new stories to attack. Something will come to me at some point.”
Until then, Bourne has enough on his plate to keep him busy, and Christmas will remain his busiest time of the year, but he’s taking a well-earned two-and-a-half-week break over the festive period to relax. His long-term partner, choreographer Arthur Pita, and their dog, will be trading their London home for their flat on the Brighton seafront. “Christmas will be very simple – it’ll be nothing other than a rest and lots of good old movies!”
Sleeping Beauty is on Christmas Day at 1:15pm on BBC Two and then on BBC iPlayer. Edward Scissorhands is on tour now. Find tickets at new-adventures.net.
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