It/s hard to believe that the leading British choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne didn’t actually see his first ballet until he was 18 years old. He started studying at London’s Laban Center at 20, and then two years later, he began dance classes.  However, his interests gradually shifted from dancing to choreographing for television, theatre, and other dance companies, and by 1986 he graduated with an MA in dance performance. The  next year he co-founded the London-based company Adventures in Motion Pictures and the London ballet was never ever the same, as he focused on radical reinterpretations of classic ballets.

Then in the mid 1990s Bourne restaged Tchaikovsky‘s Swan Lake. In his updated version, he placed the prince in a contemporary dysfunctional family and had him fall in love with a male swan. Bourne portrayed swans as large, aggressive, and powerful creatures, danced by bare-chested men wearing knee-length shorts made of shredded silk resembling feathers. Swan Lake won the 1996 Laurence Olivier Award for best new dance production, and the production won 1999’s 53rd Tony Awards for direction and choreography after it opened on Broadway in 1998. (the first of 4 Tony’s he would win)

By the time he produced The Car Men, his take on the Bolshoi Ballet’s version of Bizet’s Carmen which Bourne made notable for its frank depictions of violence and sex, including homoeroticism, his productions were the hottest tickets in London’s West End and on Broadway.  Next up were his ballets based on Edward Scissorhands, plus  Dorian Grey, The Lord of The Flies, The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella etc erc

Then in 2021 came The Midnight Bell: set in London’s Soho a hundred years ago a seedy, often dangerous part of London, populated by hustlers and life’s losers.  It includes bittersweet, clandestine, romance between West End chorus boy, Albert  (Liam Mower) and off-duty police office Frank (Andrew Monaghan) focusing on a whole era of long forgotten gay history and experience.  That Frank is a policeman at a time when homosexuality was illegal, adds spice and urgency to their ephemeral encounter and is one of alltime favorite ballets.  Check it it below and you will see why it is Queerguru’s favorite.

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