Forget Tutus, Bourne Puts The Brawn Into Classic Ballet
The Age
Tuesday February 20, 2007
MATTHEW Bourne doesn't like to use the word "ballet" to describe his version of Swan Lake. The London-born choreographer thinks the word puts some people off. "A lot of people decide either they like ballet or they don't and they're very clear about it," he says. "And I think, 'that's a shame because you'd probably like this'."
Forget fluttery women in tutus in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Instead, men dance the iconic roles of Odette - here "the Swan" - and the corps de ballet in his radical reworking of the classic Tchaikovsky ballet that has itself become a classic.Since debuting in 1995 with the Royal Ballet's Adam Cooper in the lead role (featured in the film Billy Elliot), Bourne's Swan Lake has gone on to be the longest-running ballet on the West End and Broadway and earned Bourne accolades including Tonys, Oliviers, Drama Desk, Time Out and Astaire awards. Bourne remains the only English person to have won a Tony for best choreography and direction."It's sort of unheard of, not something I could have predicted it would do," Bourne said in Melbourne yesterday, ahead of his show's Australian premiere in Sydney on Thursday.Bourne has just flown in from Washington where his production of Edward Scissorhands is now on as part of a six-month US tour. He says an Australian tour of that show in a year is looking promising. His company, New Adventures, usually has a few productions on the go - he also has his own versions of Nutcracker and Carmen (Car Man) - but it is Swan Lake that has put the now 47-year-old on the map.It has taken the show's 10th anniversary relaunch, which began in 2004, to finally make an Australian tour happen. It will also have its Moscow premiere - birthplace of the original Swan Lake - after Australia."It's doubly exciting that it premiered there originally," says Bourne. "It'll be interesting to see how the Russians take to it."I want the audience to 'get it' wherever we are."There are a lot of laughs in Bourne's Swan Lake, but he stresses it's not a parody like the version performed by the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, who have brought their show featuring a couple of scenes from Swan Lake to Australia in recent years. Bourne's Swan Lake is a reworking of the entire ballet; and it's not men in drag, as many are quick to assume. "People couldn't conceive of swans being danced by anything other than women," says Bourne. Which shows the power the original ballet has had over people's perceptions of swans as female creatures. Bourne agrees.He believes the classical ballet represents the swan on the water - "the beautiful shape, the gliding, that very feminine feel". But out of the water, he says they become gangly, turned in, "and when they come in to land they sort of flap their wings backwards," he says, leaning back in his chair and flapping his arms. "Quite ungainly things"."Looking at them, I felt a male dancer could probably get across what they really are a lot better (than women)."Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake opens at Melbourne's Regent Theatre on April 11. Book on 1300 795 012.
© 2007 The Age