Theatre and Dance Previews

I think it's fair to say that Matthew Bourne and his New Adventures Company quite literally changed the face of dance. His productions, including the all-male Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Play Without Words, Edward Scissorhands and Highland Fling, have encouraged greater audiences to come to dance and made it more popular that ever before.

This week, he is bringing his internationally acclaimed dance/thriller The Car Man, to the Milton Keynes Theatre. Loosely based on Bizet's opera Carmen (see what he did there!) it hasn't been seen in the UK for seven years.

The familiar 19th Century Spanish cigarette factory in the opera becomes a greasy garage-diner in 1960s America where the dreams and passions of a small Italian-American community are shattered by the arrival of a handsome stranger.

Matthew told us what to expect and how he feels about his contribution to the world of dance.

How does The Car Man relate to Carmen?

Matthew: It's loosely based in the sense that it has similarities in feeling. It's a very earthy story and a story with a lot of sex and violence in it which Carmen tends to have and characters where you could say oh she's Carmen - there's sort of a male and female Carmen figure in it. If you knew the opera really well you would get an essence of it but it's not something that you would follow plot-wise particularly. What I always set out to do is tell a story that you don't need to know anything beforehand. You don't need to have read a thing - all you need to do is sit there and watch and it will unfold.

Matthew: Yes - it's set in 1960 in one of those small towns in the mid-West of America - a sort of Italian American community, the place where people meet up at night at the diner attached to a garage run by the same guy. It's one of those kind of places, a very dusty town where everyone knows everyone else's business.

And into this comes a handsome stranger?

Matthew: Yes - he's like a fate figure and there's a fate theme in Carmen and this is associated with this character. When he arrives a chain of events affects everyone. He's a sort of catalyst for change.

But it's still Bizet's score isn't it?

Matthew: Yes - it's all Bizet music but re-orchestrated for strings and percussion. It sounds as if that's going to be quite a small sound but actually you would never believe it was just strings and percussion when you listen to it, it sounds incredibly powerful. It's a fantastic arrangement of the music, I would say much stronger than the opera in terms of the power of the sound that it makes. It gets really under your skin, it's fantastic.

This is a revival, having first been seen in the year 2000, how do you decide when to bring something back and what you should bring back?

Matthew: It's sort of instinct a little bit. The last time we did it was abroad so it hadn't been seen in this country for seven years. I realised that since that time our audience has grown enormously with Nutcracker and more Swan Lake and Edward Scissorhands and all the pieces we'd been doing since then and this seemed to be a piece that a lot of people hadn't seen and a lot of people were talking about it so I thought maybe it's time to do it again. There's a lot of people who have got to know us through other pieces who would like to see this really different side to what we do. It's also the most challenging piece for the company in terms of the acting roles, they are the most difficult, most emotionally challenging roles that we have. I thought it would be great to
introduce what is essentially a lot of new dancers to these roles.

Matthew: We have yes. That's the wonderful thing about this company, people are so loyal. I've got people who have worked with me since that time and have never stopped working for me. Alan Vincent who played the Car Man is still doing it having come back to it after five years and a half years. He's never stopped working for me. There is also a lot of new talent, people who have never been in the piece or people who did it at the tail end of it and had a small role but are now play a big role, so it's quite nice that the history is there.

What new pieces are you working on or are you just working on touring revivals this year?

Matthew: This year is more or less that, but I am working on new stuff and I'm actually in the middle of a workshop at the moment called 'Romeo Romeo' which deals with male duets. There's something about male partnering which has its problems dance-wise but it's not a piece at the moment, we are just trying something out.

Next year there'll be a new piece but it won't tour a lot to begin with because we're just going to see what we have, but I think that's going to be based on The Picture of Dorian Gray. So I'm definitely in a creative whirlpool of ideas at the moment. It feels like there's nothing new happening but you are always a year ahead.

This year 2007, is 20 years that you've been Artistic Director of your own dance company. Is it possible to give a highlight or is that an impossible question?

Matthew: There have been lots along the way and it's all been very surprising. It's nothing that could have been predicted and nothing that was planned which is one of the most exciting things about it. It was impossible to see that it would ever go this far and I've loved it every inch of the way really, I've enjoyed every aspect of it.  So it doesn't feel like I've finally got there or something because it was never really planned.

Was there a particular turning point where things took off, Swan Lake for instance?

Matthew: Yes, I could say Swan Lake because it was a big turning point for all of us. It was an amazing experience to be involved with something that just changed so much. It's really gone down in dance history as a moment which changed something and was a significant thing. To have achieved that feels wonderful. And this enormous growth of audience which happened after that is again a phenomenon that couldn't have been predicted.

Since then, the idea of dance that a lot of people will come and see has changed so you have kind of changed dance. That must be something to be proud of?

Matthew: That's the thing I am most proud of and if I'm asked the growth of audience is the thing that I can quite happily blow my own trumpet about, and I love that. I get excited by the fact that there are full houses. I think that people trust you after a while and that feels good.

What would you say to people to come along and check one of your productions out?

Matthew: It's always difficult to persuade people who think they don't like dance to come. Maybe they wouldn't like ALL dance but this is so accessible. From my own experience I know that a lot of people have been dragged along by friends or girlfriends and it's something that they would never have dreamt of coming to see and then they get hooked. Because when you get there it's like watching a great film, you get involved in the story and you understand the characters and you get swept away by it. I think it's just a case of dipping your foot in the water and giving it a chance and then you might find a whole new life for yourself of enjoying dance theatre and other similar things. It's about people taking the plunge really.