Matthew Bourne

Early Life 

He was born in Hackney, London and went to William Fitt and Sir George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London. Young and wild, Bourne was really obsessed about autographs. He was waiting by the stage doors for famous theater performers and other celebrities to leave after the show or London top hotels. When he was a child he used to make up his own versions of seen
performances.

Matthew Bourne

He started his career when he was 20, whereas he quit higher education course and tried to build up his career in theater. Although, he got bachelor`s degree at The Laban Center for Movement and Dance at age 22 and kept progressing as a

theater dance performer more and more. The beginning of his career was not as easy as 2+2. He got work for it very hard. However, when he was a teenager he used to teach dancing amateurs, without having any professional experience as a dancer.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. By Herman Cain

He started from lower positions such as filing clerk at BBC, usher and bookshop assistant at the National Theater and he was selling tickets for Keith Prowse Theater Agents productions. After finishing his studies he went touring for two years with the dance company Transitions. When the time passed he did not perform that much as he used to, and focused on choreographing for theater, television and other dance companies.  His name started being recognized for creating his own version of Ballet Swan.

Most popular productions staged by Matthew Bourne are

• Swan Lake. In 1995, the swan lake was staged and presented in London for the first time. It is also known as the world`s longest running ballet show which was performed around the planet: UK, Los Angeles,Europe,Australia, Japan etc. The story line is based on the scenario of Russian swan lake composed by talented Russian director Tchaikovsky. Bourne also used captivating music bits which are very catchy and hard forgettable. Not to mention the male dancing female parts of the swans. 
• The Car Man. It was performed for the first time in 2000 in PLymouth, London and was without transformed at the Old Vic rapidly later on that year. 
• Sleeping Beauty.
• Play Without Words.
• Cinderella.
• Nutcracker!
• Edward Scissorhands

         Matthew Bourne`s Swan Lake 

Company 

After years of dancing on stage, one of the best British directors, Matthew Bourne started his own business. In 1987, collaborating with his colleagues and friends, Emma Gladstone and David Massingham, established new dance company, Adventures in Motion Pictures. Everything was going very well, and later on, in 1991, he became the owner of the AMP company. Tickets were wiped off the counter as people just loved it. The most successful works are: Swan Lake, The Car Man, Highland Fling, Nutcracker and a couple more.

Nutcracker! 

After good 15 years of working for AMP company, he enthralled people with the new his own dance company New Adventures,in 2002, and its productions. Play Without Words smashed ticket selling record, premiered at National Theater and took a tour around the world, winning millions of people hearts. Moreover, it got nominated for Olivier Award for Best Entertainment and Choreography. Very impressive, Bourne, very impressive!

Every year, he got new audiences for his shows, especially on 10th year anniversary Swan Lake when it went on World Tour, including Australia, Russia,USA, Asia and Europe. Bourne kept people
 impressed with his new productions The Car Man in 2007 and Nutcracker! in 2008.

Most of his productions are still on, so it is highly recommended going and seeing it as his work is unique.

Interesting facts about Matthew Bourne and his productions

• Matthew Bourne`s Swan Lake has collected 25 international awards. 
• His big break started after the Nutcracker! came out into the light of the day. 
• He never thought he would perform on Broadway. 
• He won two Tony awards at the same night. 
• As a best dancer he nominates Fred Astaire 
• He was an obsessive autograph collector. 
• Known as a director of the world`s longest running play.
• He stopped eating puddings at age 30, in order to watch his weight. 

Style

Matthew Bourne technique is completely different compering to DV8 and Steven Berkoff, however only DV8 company created their own ideas as for Bourne and Berkoff took ideas and stylised them, making them their own pieces. Berkoff style is famous for its exaggeration. His movements are unrealistic, repetition, assemble and choral work (actors say words at the same time).

Bourne style, ballet with dance movements. As seen in the video above they do not wear ballet shoes, rather they dance in bare foot, using ballet movements. Dancers` fingers are always must be pointy, secure and tight.

I use the talents of the performer, whether they are a dancer or not, The work comes through the piece and the story you are trying to tell. 

By Matthew Bourne.

An exclusive interview with Matthew Bourne

Awards and nominations 

Matthew Bourne (born 13 January 1960, now at age 55) is recognized world wide as an English choreographer, dancer and theater director. He is known as one of the world`s best choreographers and directors. His name is recognized in over 30 international awards around the world. He is also notable as the founder of the world`s longest running ballet show Swan Lake, a five-time Olivier award winner and he`s the only one British director who obtained impressively the Tony award for both Best Choreographer and Best Director. He`s got so many awards and nominations that it is hard to count.


PERFORMANCE

Our performance in groups went very well. I was in the same group with Ryan, Jack, Jerome, Isabella, Matthew and Klaudian. We decided to devise Alice in Wonderland and relate it with Swan Lake. As Matthew Bourne chooses already written play and styles it in his own way, using ballet movements. We did the same thing. We got only 1 hour to devise 5 minutes long piece, which we found really hard as we had plenty of ideas.

Jerome was already chosen the song for our performance. It`s `Black Swan Remix.`
Here is the link to the song  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIbken4b2HQ

There were two girls in our group: me and Isabella so we came up with idea of the girl, having two sides:good and bad. I was playing good side, whilst Isabella was bad. The idea was also taken from the movie Black Swan, staring Natalie Portman. Aggressive and angry, Jack and Jerome were on bad side. Happy and soft, Klaudian and Matthew on good side.

The performance started with me and Isabella going to sleep. As physical theatre skills, we used miming and mirroring. In addition, Ryan was controlling us so it was like puppetry. When the music starts playing Isabella slides off right and crouches down, whilst I started dancing and waking up the other good fairies(Klaudian and Matthew). After the music changed Isabella and her companions starts dancing. Basically, it was a battle between light and dark. We achieved the assessment requirements by adding lifts, different levels, plunge and catching, repetition, spins and exaggerated movements based on Matthew Bourne`s technique.

Finally, all the characters apart me turned into massive chaos. It was like a hurricane of bad souls trying to extinguish the last good one(me). We came up with this idea, me being the last good character as I was wearing a pale blue jumper which associated with goodness and purity, while everyone else was wearing dark clothes.

P.S. I prepared myself for assessment and came to college wearing black t`shirt under but the rest of group members suggested me wearing blue jumper, and so I did.

Improvisation 3

It`s been already 3 weeks since we started working on impro. As we do it on Thursday session, there we have just couple of hours of playing improvisational games. For the start we did warm up: tongue twisters, dancing, shaking our heads, etc. I would say that we could do it every morning as it is very helpful. I tried to woke up earlier to do warm up but there is always just not enough time. It only takes 10 minutes and doing warm up all together is much more fun than doing it alone.

Secondly, we began with easy game: Rob put his glasses` case on the floor and we need to create a few seconds scene, changing the subject of the glasses` case to everything apart glasses. For instance, Matthew came up with idea of using it as TV remoter, whilst Isabella used it as a shot gun and shouted out EVERYONE GET DOWN! It is a good exercise to begin the day with, because it is funny and energetic.

Later on, Rob divided us into two groups: A and B. So A`s were standing in a circle facing outwards then B`s stood in front A`s. The main task for A`s was to think of a short opening line. It could be anything. As I was A, because A is for Amber, my opening line was `You forgot to bring my cookies?` and in my observation almost everyone suggested me another pack of cookies and apologized. This suggests that it is a general opinion of everyone. I would say it just a certain way of politeness that everyone is used to do. Of course, there were some blocking like `no, you didn`t ask me to bring cookies, you asked Rebecca(name is made up as I don`t remember what my partner exactly said). The purpose of this game is just go for it, no matter what the opening line is. It might even be `You`ve got ice cream on your hair, should we eat it?`. The answer always has to be positive. And it is important to remember that attacking other actor is not acceptable as gives just cheap laughs.

Another exercise we done Thursday morning was to get into pairs and create a short, improvised piece related to touching themes such as

• abuse
• bullying 
• FMG
• self-harm 

My partner was Ryan and we chose to work on bullying theme. Ryan pretend to be a bully and I was the one being bullied. I quickly picked up some people`s weaknesses that is often associated with bullying: stuttering, being obsessed about the bully, giving everything to him, worshipping Ryan, forgetting about myself and my needs. I have seen these things happening in lots of teenage movies.

I tried to think of how would I feel if that happened in real life. Basically, I tried to use Stanislavki`s technique Magic If. When we started throwing out our ideas I knew that Ryan does not mean what he says, it just because of the theme we chose. You picked at me, which helped to get under the skin and understand that being bullied people have serious problems.

Improvisation 2

First thing we did today was warm up with Brandon. As almost every morning we stood up in a circle and warmed up our face by keeping it very tight and opening very wide(as much as we can). Also not forgetting body warm up when one person shows any movement and everyone else has to repeat it.

"Deleted scenes game". Our task was to devise couple of scenes which has been deleted from a well known movie. I was in a group with Jennifer and Brandon and we chosen Titanic as everyone knows it. It was very hard to think of something as we didn`t have much ideas but remaining few last seconds we decided to do the bit where Rose is holding Jack`s hands not letting him drawn. I was a cameraman. So I shouted "cut!!" for couple of times as I didnt have much to say. We`ve chosen the movie we all know very well so we already had location and timing as set in film. I think we played this game in order to apply and develop our ideas to already given idea which was challenging as there were too many scenes we can choose and we only need one or two. We was thinking of changing the movie to Bad Neighbors because we thought that we need to add some normal scenes but while watching others` we decided to do some Titanic bloopers.

"One person story, played with different genres." Second task was to devise a short piece of how one of our group member woke up and went to college today. As we were in the same groups as before we decided that we can work on Brandon`s morning as mine`s and Jennifer`s wasnt that interesting. So Jennifer was playing Cashe as Brandon called him in the morning to ask if he`s coming in college whilst I pretended to be Romaine which didn`t pick up the phone when Brandon called him. When Brandon was on the phone speaking with Jennifer(Cashe) genre changed from normal to sci fi and from sci fi to Shakespearean. When the story switched to Romaine(me) on the train as stranger (Jennifer) bumped into me and I got into argument trying to say things Romaine would say which made audience laugh. Next scene was Brandon taking train and me and Jennifer staring at him. When genre switched to romantic comedy I stood up on the left side, Jennifer on the right and Brandon was in the middle. Playing different genres made us add more conversational and slightly change it. For me it was more fun than playing just a normal version of it as it added more humor to it.

Scripted scenes. I was in pair with Ryan and we decided to do scene 1 which was quite easy to devise because there weren`t any subject we were talking about. I came up with idea Ryan saying "Nothing I just... just stole 2 millions.." I tried to play use "magic if" which didnt really helped me because I couldnt focus. However, we didnt show our piece as it wasnt enough time left.