MATTHEW BOURNE

Born in London in 1960, Matthew Bourne came to dance late at 22 years old, when he started studies at Laban Centre for his BA in dance and theatre (gained 1986), but he brought to Laban an impressive breadth and knowledge of theatre, dance and old musicals (which he had staged in his own versions as a teenager at youth club in Walthamstow) and he had already worked at the BBC, the National Theatre bookshop and in a leading West End ticket agency.

After Laban, Bourne set up his own company Adventures in Motion Pictures in 1987, whose early successes (The Infernal Galop, Town and Country and Deadly Serious) heralded a series of radical and entertaining revisions of classic ballets, starting with The Nutcracker (1992, originally commissioned by Opera North for the Tchaikovsky centenary) and Highland Fling (Bourne's 1994 take on Bournonville's La Sylphide).

In 1995 came the Sadler's Wells premiere of Bourne's famous Swan Lake, with its all-male corps of swans, which conquered the West End (becoming in 1997 the longest-running ballet in London since Diaghilev's Sleeping Princess in 1926) and Broadway, where it won several Tony awards, before the TV broadcast and continuing international tours. Two further AMP productions - Cinderella (1997) and The Car Man (2000) - followed, before the company closed, to be replaced by Bourne's current company New Adventures.

Meanwhile, Bourne's career as a freelance West End choreographer had flourished, with commissioned dances for musicals including Children of Eden and Cameron Mackintosh's long-running 1997 Palladium revival of Oliver!, following the huge success of which, Bourne has staged dances for the National Theatre productions of South Pacific and My Fair Lady, and the current West End and Broadway hit Mary Poppins. His Olivier Award-winning Play Without Words (based on the 1960s Pinter/Losey film The Servant) sold out at the National Theatre and transferred to Broadway.

Matthew Bourne and New Adventures continue from strength to strength, with the recent production of Edward Scissorhands, London revivals and touring productions of Swan Lake, Highland Fling and The Nutcracker as well as the Mary Poppins continuing run at London's Prince Edward Theatre. 2007 sees a major revival of The Car Man (Sadler's Wells and national tour).

©Tim Tubbs