Bourne again: Sleeping Beauty

In December, Matthew Bourne celebrates 25 years of his company, the New Adventures, with Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, decribed as the gothic romance of a young girl who sleeps for a hundred years then awakes to the modern world. It's the third of his Tchaikovsky ballets, the first being his Nutcracker! in1992, the second his most famous , 'Swan Lake', with the all male corps de ballet. The original Sleeping Beauty was choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1890; this is the year Bourne begins with for Aurora's christening. Bourne has used three of his regular collaborators, including the award-winning Les Brotherston (set and costumes).

Although I have loved seeing many of his ballets, my favourite is still Swan Lake, internationally famed not only for its own tours, but also for the 'cameo appearance' it makes at the end of the film Billy Elliot, with the original lead Adam Cooper playing a grown up Billy about to go on stage for the Bourne production.( Adam Cooper is currently starring in Singing in the Rain, in Shaftesbury Avenue.)

In Swan Lake the Tchaikovsky music is danced to riotously in the bar, which with Bourne's distinctive choreography takes on the atmosphere of a Toulouse Lautrec painting, even if the costumes are more of a strange mish-mash of fifities and sixties. This contrasts with the dance at the palace, which is invaded by characters from the other world.  The court also goes to the theatre, so you see  dances within a dance, this last one a comic pastiche of  ballet.                        

Other Bourne productions I have seen include Edward Scissorhands, which stayed very close to the Tim Burton, Johnny Depp film.

The Nutcracker! was a frothy and exhuberant  Christmas entertainment, and well suited to introducing people who don't normally go to ballet to the world of dance, though as far as spectacular dancing it wasn't the best production, though it has a Busby Berkley style effervescence.

'Play without words' was based on the 1963 film, 'The Servant', Harold Pinter's adaptation of a 1948 novelette, starring Dirk Bogarde and James Fox, where the servant/master roles are gradually reversed. In the dance production, Bourne  shows the story unfolding with three versions of each character and multi-sets within the set.               

Finally, 'Car Man', set to the music of Bizet's Carmen, loosely based on 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'. Here it's the small town that's sleepy, woken up by a visiting drifter, Luca.