Matthew Bourne and His Adventures in Motion Pictures - Softcover

In-depth interviews with the maverick British choreographer best known for his revolutionary, tony award-winning "Swan Lake" In the ten years since Matthew Bourne started his dance company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, he has earned a reputation as one of the most exciting choreographers at work today. His experimental style can be seen in his original dances-such as "Town and Country," a work that includes a pas de deux that Bourne describes as "a Fred and Ginger number for two men"-and in his new versions of ballet classics, including his groundbreaking "Swan Lake," with its cast of male swans, and "The Nutcracker," set in a Dickensian orphanage. Drawing on his years of studying all varieties of dance as well as on his vast knowledge of dance history, theater, and popular culture, Bourne has been able to fuse elements of classical and modern dance, theatrical innovation, and sexual expression in a new way, reflecting a uniquely ironic, postmodern sensibility in his playing with the elements of classical dance and reexamining the traditional relationships between-and within-the sexes. In these interviews with the distinguished dance and theater critic Alastair Macaulay, Bourne demonstrates persuasively just how he has synthesized these disparate elements to create an experience that audiences around the world have found mesmerizing and startling in its beauty and originality.

Alastair Macaulay is currently chief theater critic of the Financial Times. From 1988 to 1992, he served as guest dance critic for The New Yorker; he has also written a biography of Margot Fonteyn and is at work on a biography of Merce Cunningham for FSG.