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Anniversary Celebrations for Bourne's New Adventures

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Next year is an anniversary year for Matthew Bourne’s company New Adventures. Bourne and Sadler’s Wells, where he is an associate artist, will celebrate with a year of performances, from revivals of early work to a brand new Sleeping Beauty for Christmas 2012. Founded in 1987 as Adventures in Motion Pictures, New Adventures is one of the world’s most successful dance companies. The anniversary year will open with a seven week season of Nutcracker! at Sadler’s Wells, the company’s tenth consecutive festive season at the theatre. Created in 1992, the work has been seen by more than 218,000 people in London alone. The Sadler’s Wells season will be followed by a UK tour.
In May, Sadler’s Wells presents Early Adventures (pictured), a mixed bill of early works by Bourne. It includes his first hit Spitfire, created in 1988, The Infernal Galop (1989) and the Olivier-nominated Town and Country. In July, the company dance Play Without Words, which won the Olivier awards for best entertainment and best theatre choreographer after its premiere at the National Theatre in 2002. The production will also tour to Leicester and Norwich.
The anniversary year will end with a Christmas season of The Sleeping Beauty, to Tchaikovsky’s score. Bourne is known for his radical updates of classic work and his version of Tchaikovsky's 1889 ballet promises to be no exception. Subtitled “A Gothic Fairy Tale”, Bourne's production will begin with Aurora's christening in 1890, the year of the ballet's premiere, and a time when "fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination". He will then fast-forward to the more rigid and uptight Edwardians when the evil fairy godmother puts the heroine to sleep, and then to 2011, when she wakes up.
At the risk of shocking hopeless romantics everywhere, Bourne said he was ditching the idea of love at first sight. "The idea of falling asleep, being woken up by a stranger with a kiss and then falling in love and getting married – I don't buy that really," he said. "I've devised a way of creating a love story which begins early on in the piece and carries on through. And for me, it felt there was not much conflict after Act I. Once she goes to sleep, not much happens. Being a storyteller, I wanted a beginning, a middle and an end, and some conflict.”
Bourne promised that the production would “feed the imagination”. “Do expect some twists and new characters, but I do very much want to tell a fairy story. That’s still the mission of the piece,” he said.
Matthew Bourne is regarded as Britain’s most popular choreographer. His Swan Lake is the longest-running ballet production in London's West End and on Broadway and caused a sensation when it premiered in 1995 with an all-male ensemble. Sources: www.guardian.co.uk, www.telegraph.co.uk

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