Matthew Bourne - Choreographer & Co-Director

Matthew Bourne is widely hailed as the UK’s most popular and successful choreographer/director, creator of the world’s longest-running ballet production, a fi ve-time Olivier Award winner, and the only British director to win Tony Awards for Best Choreographer and Best Director of a Musical. Matthew was artistic director of his fi rst company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, from 1987 until 2002. AMP became the UK’s most innovative and popular dance/theatre company, creating a new audience for dance with its groundbreaking Swan Lake, Cinderella and The Car Man. In 2002, Matthew launched his company New Adventures and premiered Play Without Words (NT Transformation Season, Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment and Choreography) and his revised Nutcracker! (Sadler’s Wells). New Adventures revivals include Highland Fling, The Car Man and Swan Lake (tenth anniversary production). In 2005, it presented the theatrical premiere of Edward Scissorhands, based on Tim Burton’s fi lm. Matthew has created choreography for classic musical revivals including Cameron Mackintosh’s Oliver! (1994), My Fair Lady (Olivier Award) and South Pacific (NT). In 2004, he co-directed and choreographed Mary Poppins (West End Olivier Award, Broadway Tony nomination). He has twice been nominated Best Director at the Olivier Awards and his choreography has been recognised with over 30 international awards. In the 2001 New Year’s Honours, he was awarded an OBE for services to dance. His latest show for New Adventures, Dorian Gray, was the most successful dance production in the history of the Edinburgh International Festival.

"This Oliver! is a bigger-scale production than 1994. There are more people on stage, more kids in Fagin’s gang. Oliver! is the most populated show in the West End and the biggest production, in terms of dancing ensemble on stage, that there has been at Drury Lane since the 1930s – and as a choreographer that’s very exciting. Teaching dance moves to children is different. With adults, you have an idea of how they move, of their character, and you can work with them in creating a choreography that suits them. With children, you have to be more uniform in the dance moves to start with, to simply tell them how you would like them to move. Though they will learn and perform them as taught, their individuality always breaks through, and each child produces something special; their individuality emerges at a different stage of the rehearsal process. This Oliver! has a ‘wow’ factor unlike anything else the West End has seen for years. How do the dancers deal with cobblestones? You’ll have to see…"