Partner Arthur Pita
Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Trinity Laban Conservatoire Of Music and Dance, King Charles Court, Royal Naval College, London SE10 9JF, Regno Unito
Sir
Matthew Christopher Bourne OBE (born 13 January 1960) is an English
choreographer. His work includes contemporary dance and dance theatre. He
has received multiple awards and award nominations, including the Laurence
Olivier Award, Tony Award and Drama Desk Award, and he has also received
several Honorary Doctorates of Arts from UK universities. Bourne was
knighted in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to dance.[1]
In 1995 Bourne began a long-term relationship with Arthur Pita,
a principal dancer with AMP. "I met Arthur when he was a swan and I was the director of Swan Lake. We didn’t want anyone to feel like there was any favouritism. But people were lovely about it. They could see it was the real thing."
Matthew Bourne, was born in Hackney, London He went to William Fitt and
Sir George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London. From the ages of 14 to 16
he was an avid autograph hunter, attending most West End opening nights and
waiting outside Stage Doors and top London hotels. In 1978 he left full-time
education and worked in various jobs at the BBC (filing clerk), Keith Prowse
Theatre Agents (selling theatre tickets) and The National Theatre (bookshop
and ushering). Despite having never done a dance class, he ran and directed
various amateur Dance Companies in his teenage years. In 1982 he enrolled at
the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance (now Conservatoire of Music and
Dance) in Deptford, southeast London, where he was awarded a BA in Dance
Theatre. For his final year (1986) he danced with the Laban Centre's
Transitions Dance Company. After graduation he formed the dance company,
Adventures in Motion Pictures (AMP), with fellow directors, and friends,
Emma Gladstone and David Massingham. Bourne has worked as a professional
choreographer and director since 1987, becoming sole artistic director of
AMP in 1991 and New Adventures in 2002. He is a patron for arts charity
Create and now lives in Islington, London and Brighton
Matthew Bourne is the only British director to have won Tony Awards for
the Best Direction of a Musical and Best Choreography. He has been said to
be the most audience-conscious artist. He does not go into detail about his
works because he wants the audience to have their own interpretations.
Bourne started training as a dancer at the relatively late age of 22. He
studied Dance Theatre and Choreography at Laban, graduating in 1985 but
spending two more years with the college's performance company Transitions.
He danced professionally for 14 years, creating many roles in his own work.
In 1999 he gave his final performance, playing The Private Secretary in the
Broadway production of Swan Lake.
Matthew Bourne was the artistic director of his first company, Adventures
in Motion Pictures (AMP), from 1987 until 2002.
In 2002 Bourne launched his latest company, New Adventures, with two
highly successful productions. Play Without Words premiered as part
of the National Theatre's Transformations Season and went on to win Best
Entertainment and Choreography at that year's Olivier Awards. It then
embarked on a World Tour and premiered in New York, Los Angeles and Moscow
in 2008. Bourne's revised Nutcracker! also premiered at Sadler's
Wells in 2002 and became an instant popular hit with audiences and critics,
returning the following year for a second sell-out season. It became the
first ballet to be screened by BBC1 in over 20 years and then also embarked
on a world tour.
Bourne's Highland Fling and 10th Anniversary production of Swan
Lake have also reached new audiences through extensive International
touring, including seasons in Asia, Australia, Russia, Europe and the USA.
New Adventures has continued to revive Bourne's work, including The Car
Man in 2007 and Nutcracker! in 2008.
In 2005, New Adventures presented Matthew Bourne's production of
Edward Scissorhands, based on Tim Burton's classic film, received its
world premiere at Sadlers Wells Theatre. After breaking box office records
over an 11-week season, the production toured the UK, before international
debuts in Asia and a 6-month tour of the USA. The success of New Adventures
relationship with Sadler's Wells Theatre was recognised in 2006 by the
invitation to become Resident Company. Matthew Bourne is also a Resident
Artist at Sadlers Wells.
Bourne has also created choreography for several major revivals of
classic musicals including Cameron Mackintosh's productions of Oliver!
(1994) and My Fair Lady (Olivier Award 2002) as well as the National
Theatre's revival of South Pacific (2001). In 2004 Bourne Co-Directed
(with Richard Eyre) and Choreographed (with Stephen Mear) the West End and
Broadway hit musical Mary Poppins, for which he won an Olivier Award
for Best Theatre Choreographer.
His film work includes television productions of his stage work including
Matthew Bourne's 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 in 1993.
Bourne was the subject of a South Bank Show in 1997 and in 1999 he
presented Channel 4's Dance 4 Series. The channel 4 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.
In 2007 Bourne was contemplating a gay version of Romeo and Juliet.
Despite the success of his Swan Lake, in which he altered the
traditional story to be about a human male falling in love with a male swan,
Bourne acknowledged the challenge of a gay Romeo and Juliet. "It's
more to do with dancing than with sexuality," he said "A male dancer,
whether gay or straight, fits into a relationship with a female partner very
happily. It's something you're taught, and it fits, it feels right, the
lifting and all that stuff. Getting away from that, making a convincing love
duet, a romantic, sexual duet, for two men that is comfortable to do and
comfortable to watch–I don't know if you can. I've never seen it done."[2]
Dorian Gray, based on Oscar Wilde’s gothic masterpiece, premiered
at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival, and became the most successful dance
production in the Festival’s 62-year history. Later in 2008 he co-directed
and choreographed Cameron Mackintosh's latest revival of Oliver! with
Rowan Atkinson, which played at London's Drury Lane Theatre. In 2010, New
Adventures Performed an adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies,
it was put together in 3 weeks of rehearsing, and was performed in The
Theatre Royal in Glasgow.
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, The South
Bank Show Award, Time Out Award and the Astaire Award for Dance on Broadway.
In the 2001 New Years Honours, Bourne was awarded an OBE for Services to
Dance and in 2003 he was the recipient of the Hamburg Shakespeare Prize for
the Arts. In 1997 Matthew was made an Honorary Fellow of his former college,
The Laban Centre, becoming a Companion of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of
Music and Dance in 2012. He has six Honorary Doctorates from The Open
University, and the De Montfort, Plymouth, Kingston and Roehampton
Universities, as well as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He is also a
Companion of Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and a proud patron of
many organisations, including The Arts Educational School, Laine Theatre
Arts, CREATE and Shoreditch Youth Dance. In June 2018 Matthew received an
honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from University of Oxford.
In 2014 Matthew Bourne was awarded the prestigious De Valois Award for
Outstanding Achievement at the National Dance Awards and later that year saw
the opening of the Matthew Bourne Theatre, named in his honour, at his old
school in East London, Sir George Monoux College. In 2015 he became the
first dance figure to be given The Stage Award for Outstanding Contribution
to British Theatre presented by the UK Theatre Awards. He was knighted in
the Queen’s New Year Honours 2016 for services to dance and awarded the
Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award in recognition of his outstanding
services to the art of ballet, which is one of the most coveted honours in
the world of dance. In 2017 Matthew was appointed an Associate Artist for
the Center Theatre Group in the USA.
In 2016 Bourne created his 11th full-length production The Red Shoes,
based on the classic Powell and Pressburger film, with music by Bernard
Herrmann. It was premiered at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, on December 6,
2016. It has since been performed to sell out audiences across the UK and
won two Olivier Awards in 2017 for Best Entertainment and Matthew Bourne for
Best Theatre Choreographer.
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