Sir Matthew Christopher BourneOBE (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.
Biography
Matthew Bourne was born in Hackney, London, England, in 1960. 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 Trinity Laban 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 now lives in Islington, London and Brighton, East Sussex.
Matthew Bourne (born 6 October 1977) is a British Jazz musician.
Childhood and education
Bourne was born in Avebury, England, and grew up in a small village situated in the Cotswolds, where he took up the trombone aged nine. In 1989, Bourne attended Kingham Hill School and began playing Cello the following year. After seeing Frank Sinatra play on television in 1993, Bourne began to teach himself the piano.
Bourne enrolled at Leeds College of Music in 1995 where he began to explore contemporary classical composition and avant-garde. During his time at the college he performed Michael Daugherty’s Piano concerto ‘Tombeau de Liberace’ and John Cage’s ‘Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra’. In 2001 Bourne graduated from the MMus Jazz Studies course. Bourne has subsequently taught as a part-time lecturer at Leeds College of Music and has a PhD in Performance from the University of Leeds.
Career
Matthew Bourne's success began in 2001 when he was named the Perrier Young Jazz Musician of the Year. His success continued the following year when he was awarded the prize for Jazz Innovation at the BBC Radio Jazz Awards. In this period Bourne was profiled in The Observer Music Monthly as "the future sound of jazz", and 2005 he won the International Jazz Festivals Organisation (IJFO) International Jazz Award. His first solo album, The Molde Concert, was recorded live at the Molde International Jazz Festival and received positive reviews. This performance showcased Bourne's inventive use of samples (including audio clips from The Simpsons and other TV shows) as well as his "cyclonic energy and virtuosity" and "ramblingly self-deprecating and sometimes off-mic announcements".
"It's a piece of theater that's been inspired by a movie that we all love. But it has to surprise people who know the film really well."
"He's the ultimate outsider, isn't he, really?"
"You could tell another story - they could run off together and live in a more liberal place. But I think because he is essentially made out of pieces lying around a room, he's symbolic rather than real in many ways."
"[Director Matthew Bourne said he was delighted that Burton snapped up 12 of the popular tickets. Bourne requested the rights to the story -- which follows a scientist who creates a young man with scissors for hands -- almost 10 years ago from Burton.] I gave up on it once or twice, ... I couldn't talk about it any longer and had to get it out of my head."
"I saw the Nutcracker to be a dummy as I thought of its mouth moving like a nutcracker - and also find them pretty scary as they almost have a life of their own."
"The reason I'm travelling so much is because of reasons that weren't completely planned. Several of the shows became successful and were invited to go to other places and they've all happened at similar times."
"Astaire never thought of what he was doing as balletic, but Kelly was always trying to dance with women on points. And his choreography is so showy and flashy. He always looks self-satisfied to me."
"My company is known for being funny as well as moving. You get a bit of everything in these shows. I think people know they're going to have a surprising experience."
"When it comes down to it, it's giving people a good night out in a basic way and I think my company guarantees that. There's always something new and something to excite us and surprise us, and that's why people come back, I hope."
"I would like to have directed Hollywood musicals in the '40s and '50s."
"With any project there's one or two things that you really want to do and that's going to crack it."
"People strangely revere dance. They see it as another world, and dancers are somehow mysterious - just because they don't speak."
"I once went through the dustbin outside David Bowie's house."
"I'm very conscious that I want the dance audience to respond and respect what I'm doing, so I'm always very true to the music and I honour the music in the way I see it - I don't mess around with the music."
"Sometimes you don't know what you've got until you put it in front of an audience - and the enthusiasm for the show from the audience has been just incredible."
"People know that they're going to see something which is entertaining but challenging as well because of the form it's in. It's dance theatre and it requires you to use your imagination - it's not straight forward."
Three decades ago, MatthewBourne’s staging of Swan Lake, with a bare-chested flock of fearsome swans in feather breeches instead of the trad flock of fragile birds in fluttering goose-down tutus, changed the dance-theatre world forever.
MatthewBourne's Edward Scissorhands... it that translates well to the stage, and especially with the masterly Matthew Bourne behind the production of this dance show, first performed in the UK in 2005.
He plays Scott, who is much liked by everyone in the community apart from grumpy Neil (Lee Mack) ...Good, silly fun. Tim Burton’s eccentric tale is in safe hands as renowned choreographer MatthewBourne brings it to life on stage as a ballet ... Photograph ... .
Monday ...View image in fullscreen ... Which brings us to the real hot ticket of the season, the return of MatthewBourne’s Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells, almost impossible to get a seat for without leaving the house and queueing for returns ... Happy holidays ... .
The MatthewBourne’s Swan Lake company take flight. MATTHEW Bourne’s iconic 1995 production of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake helped cement his career ... Bourne’s adaptation features an all-male corps; bare-chested dancers with feathered trousers.
But positively air-flying is the spruced up return of MatthewBourne’s Swan Lake at the main Sadler’s Wells theatre to Jan 26. When I say Matthew Bourne’s, it should really be Tchaikovsky’s since this is one of the great ballet scores of all time.
It now seems richly ironic that the ballet world was up in arms when, almost 30 years ago, MatthewBourne unveiled plans for his revolutionary Swan Lake...Audiences, too, were invited into a previously too-insular dance world thanks to Bourne.
