In 1987, with the help of friends from the Laban, he set up his own dance company Adventures in Motion Pictures (AMP). The company reworked classical pieces including The Nutcracker and La Sylphides. In 1995 the company produced Swan Lake with all the swans being played by men, and in 1997 it became the longest-running ballet in the West End since Diaghilev's Sleeping Princess in 1926. In 1999 it went to Broadway. He received a Tony Award for best choreographer and best director of the musical.
He had a seven-year relationship with David Manners who designed for AMP. In 1995 he started a relationship with Arthur Pita, a principle dancer with AMP.
In 1997 Matthew Bourne became an honorary fellow of the Laban Centre.
Also in 1997 he was asked by Cameron Mackintosh to create the dances for the revival of 's musical Oliver!. The fees from this allowed him to buy a house in Islington and set up home with Arthur Pita.
Matthew Bourne's dance drama The Car Man: An Auto-Erotic Thriller. It's not as original as his Swan Lake, but it is breathtaking in its intensity, pacing and the high energy level of Bourne's superbly honed dance troupe.
In The Car Man, Bourne, who calls Los Angeles his second home, has written his first work set on American soil. Though inspired by and set to music from Bizet's Carmen, incorporated into Terry Davies and Rodion Shchedrin's Carmen Suite, images are also drawn from The Postman Always Rings Twice and A Streetcar Named Desire. There's also a strong whiff of Tennessee Williams' earlier play, Orpheus Descending.
Set in a small mid-West town called Harmony in the mid-1960s, the focus is on sexual obsession. Bourne catches the feel of a small town exploding with raging hormones and no distractions.
The mechanics at Dino's Garage and the waitresses at Dino's Café express themselves by hip-pumping and hip-twitching respectively. The boys' alternative sport is tormenting more sensitive souls. Into this charged atmosphere strolls Luca, a drifter. Employed by Dino at his garage, Luca is a dancing phallus. He not only seduces Dino's wife, Lana, but also has a one-night stand with Angelo, the gentle boyfriend of Lana's sister Rita, who is the butt of merciless hazing by the town studs until Luca rescues him. The hitherto repressed homosexuality of Luca and Angelo and Dino's jealousy of his wife's fascination with Luca build through a climate of romantic obsession to violence, murder, betrayal and tragedy.
The choreography is uneven. The lifts are stunning but the mechanics' repetitive hip-pumping gets tiresome. The first encounter between Luca and Lana, though both are fully clothed and dancing, is more daring and erotic than anything on The Playboy Channel and the corps de ballet echoes them in a primordial pattern. Angelo and Rita have a gentle graceful pas de deux, in which their curved arms sway like willow trees.
Neither of the women come off very well. Rita lies to Angelo about Luca's involvement in Dino's murder, thus precipitating Angelo's vengence. Lana's ultimate shooting is murky in motivation. Angelo and Luca feel like innocents, manipulated by the women.
This sub-text is about as deep as the story gets but the dance gets away with its simple story because of the time, the place and the single-minded eroticism. If passion doesn't hold still long enough for emotional depth, it flares and strikes like the vivid colors in Bizet's music and Lez Brotherston's production design. The cars that rim the set of Dino's garage are bright, fast, colorful and induce an illusion of freedom in a town that nobody ever leaves.
Bourne supplements Bizet with sound effects organic to his setting. His overture is revving motors that seem to come from the back of the theatre. He heralds his party scene with the ominous buzz of crickets and mosquitos. Castenets are the prelude to the ferocious mutual seduction between Luca and Lana.
Each role is covered by four dancers. Because of the national disaster on September 11th there was no formal premiere. At the performance viewed, Arthur Pita danced Angelo. His lack of physical beauty was welcome, giving a sense of an everyman normalcy to the character, but there was nothing mundane about his dancing. Beautiful Vicky Evans gave Lana the look of a 1950s film siren. Think Dorothy Malone or Lana Turner without producer Ross Hunter's gloss. In addition to her dance control, Evans brings a poignancy and frustration to her character that makes it work. Alan Vincent is big for a dancer and he actually has love handles but he knows this man 's psyche. Luca has the most facets of any of the characters and Vincent brings him stunningly to life, in movement and character. A particular gift of this production is that you care about the people.
Matthew Bourne has been the Artistic Director and Choreographer of Adventures in Motion Pictures for over ten years. His dance training began in his early twenties, and his love for theater and cinema has led him to be dubbed "the Noel Coward of modern dance."
Born in London on January 13, 1960, Mr. Bourne graduated from the Laban Centre in 1985 with a degree in Dance/Theater, spending a further year touring with Transitions Dance Company. He was a founding member of AMP at its launch in July 1987, and his stage works for the company include "Overlap Lovers" (1987), "Spitfire" (1988), "Buck and Wing" (1988), "The Infernal Gallop" (1989), "Town & Country" (1991), "The Nutcracker" (1992), "Highland Fling" (1994), "Swan Lake" (1996) and "Cinderella" (1997).
His television work for AMP includes "Late Flowering Lust" (BBC TV 1993) and "Drip - A Love Story" (BBC TV/Arts Council Dance for the Camera Award 1993), both broadcast in 1994.
As well as creating many roles in his own work, he has also worked with choreographers Ashley Page, Jacob Marley, and Brigitte Farges, and was a founding member, in 1988, of Lea Anderson's company The Featherstonehaughs. Mr. Bourne has won several awards for his choreography, including a Bonnie Bird award, a Place Portfolio commission, and a Barclays New Stages award.
