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S41 Ep23: Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty | Clip

Interview: Matthew Bourne on Storytelling in Ballet

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Dance history and storytelling is important to choreographer Matthew Bourne, creator of a Swan Lake with an all-male corps of Swans, and an Edward Scissorhands ballet, among other innovative productions. Known for his bold re-interpretations of classic ballets like Sleeping Beauty, he is conscious of the original versions and even “reverential about them,” he says in an interview that includes rehearsal footage for Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty and clips of other ballets.

“I want to please the people who know them [the ballets] really well, as well as invite a new audience in,” says Bourne.

Musical theater and films inspired Bourne as he was growing up. After seeing a Disney movie or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a child, he would go home and try to re-create it. “I always the star,” he laughs. “The Dick Van Dyke to Mary Poppins.”

“I imagine a person who knows nothing, and the curtain goes up and I have to start telling them a story. Whether they know this piece really well and can enjoy all the differences that I’m doing with it, or, they’ve never seen a dance piece,” Bourne says he keeps both audiences in mind to focus on good storytelling.

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, the award-winning ballet production, airs on Great Performances, Friday, April 25 at 9 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings).

Features

Sleeping Beauty
Clip | The Curse is Broken in Sleeping Beauty
Matthew Bournes Sleeping Beauty: Photos of a Sleeping Beauty Like No Other
Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty: Aurora Dances in Sleep
Clip | Aurora’s 100-Year Slumber in Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty Rose Adagio
Clip | Rose Adagio Duet from Sleeping Beauty
Casting Curse in Sleeping Beauty
Clip | Casting a Curse
TRANSCRIPT

The history of dance has become a very important element in what I do.

As a choreographer, I love dipping into different eras of dance, different styles of dance, which is why I'm difficult to pinpoint into a particular style of choreography, I think.

But the classical ballets that I've reinterpreted, I'm very conscious of the original when I make those pieces.

Although I'm known, I suppose, for, sort of, reinventing them in my own way, I'm very kind of reverential in other ways about them.

I'm very, sort of, careful to be conscious of where they've come from.

I kind of want to please the people who know them really well -- you know, as well as invite this new audience in.

I want people to get the fact that I know where it's coming from.

I wasn't brought up in a house that listened to classical music at all.

We loved musical theater, pop music, I guess, but mainly musical theater, and right from the very early stage -- four or five -- I was wanting to put on a show and get other people to get involved in it.

And I would go and see a movie, usually a Disney movie or something like that -- or 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' or one of those kinds of movies that were out when I was growing up, and then I'd want to recreate it when I got home.

And I was always the star.

I was always Dick Van Dyke, it always seemed to me, around that time -- doing' Mary Poppins' and various films I'd seen.

The task I set myself usually is, I imagine a person sitting there who knows nothing, and the curtain goes up, and I have to start telling them a story -- whether they know this piece really well, and they enjoy all the differences that I'm doing with it; or they've never seen it before, they've never seen a dance piece and I try and make it on that level as well, so it's very clear storytelling.

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