Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A midweek matinee at the Lowry in Salford. Tchaikovsky’s overture strikes up and the woman next to me is munching crisps and checking her Instagram feed. Then the curtain rises. A small boy in a huge bed is having a nightmare about a big, beautiful swan and my neighbour dims her phone, suddenly spellbound. Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is working its magic once again with a 30-week UK tour to mark its 30th anniversary. Its premiere, back in 1995, changed Bourne — and dance — for ever.That first night at the old Sadler’s Wells was a major event. A few critics bemoaned the absence of classical choreography — “not a step in it” tutted my old colleague Clement Crisp — but it earned a standing ovation from a star-studded crowd, and impresario Cameron Mackintosh buttonholed Bourne in the interval, urging a West End transfer. The following year the company began a 120-performance run at the Piccadilly Theatre, breaking all records for a pure dance show. Seasons in Los Angeles and New York followed, along with a string of awards from Astaire to Tony (via Olivier).At the time, headline shorthand tended to characterise the production as “the gay Swan Lake” or “the all-male Swan Lake” but although there is a powerful homoerotic charge to the duets between Prince Siegfried and the mysterious creature of his dreams, this is more than just a love story. Bourne’s treatment tapped into the universality of Siegfried’s plight: the desperate search for contact, freedom, autonomy.Bourne founded his first company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, in 1987 (the name changed to New Adventures in 2001). Always a theatrical omnivore, the London-born dancemaker had spent his youth in the cheap seats of cinema, theatre, ballet, musical comedy, and his work was a gleeful synthesis of all that he had found there. His riffs on popular culture — Deadly Serious (Hitchcock); Town and Country (English stereotypes); The Infernal Galop (the French) — were small-scale, but in 1992 he was invited to create a new version of The Nutcracker to mark the ballet’s centenary. The result was an instant modern classic, creating a wormhole between the then very separate worlds of ballet and contemporary dance and attracting theatregoers not usually drawn to either. His next ballet makeover was 1994’s Highland Fling, which set the story of La Sylphide in a druggy Glasgow high-rise. Then, a year later, came Swan Lake.Bourne wasn’t the first to refocus attention on Siegfried — Rudolf Nureyev’s productions always beefed up the Prince’s role. He wasn’t even the first to have male swans — Mats Ek had bald men in white tutus for his gimmicky 1987 version. But neither of these enjoyed a 16-week run on Broadway. Rival companies were keen to discover the formula. “There was a little bit of snobbery,” admits Bourne when we talked earlier this week, “but I think the thought was ‘how do you get this enormous audience?’”For a while it was open season on the classics. Bourne had cleverly transplanted the action of Swan Lake from its courtly Germanic setting to a modern-day royal family: unhappy Prince, loveless Mama and “vulgar, vulgar, vulgar” girlfriend. This saucy lèse-majesté encouraged other choreographers to take greater risks. Northern Ballet’s David Nixon made an extraterrestrial Sleeping Beauty and a genuinely gay Swan Lake. Australian Ballet’s 2002 production recast Odette’s story as a thinly veiled ballet à clef on Diana, Princess of Wales’s crowded marriage.Swan Lake undoubtedly reignited an interest in narrative, but its greatest impact was on the company dancing it. “We didn’t have enough dancers,” Bourne recalls. “We didn’t even have a physio. It was a shock to the system.” Scarier still was the need to feed an audience eager for more of the same — “second-album syndrome”, laughs Bourne. Although in huge demand to choreograph musicals (My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins), he found time to create a string of dance hits including Cinderella, The Car Man, Edward Scissorhands and a vampire Sleeping Beauty. But nothing sells like Swan Lake. Bourne’s calling card has enjoyed regular revivals, constantly enlivened by fresh casts and incessant fine-tuning.Bourne was 22 before he began formal dance training and technique wasn’t a major consideration in the early days. “The general ensemble work has improved so much,” he confesses. Back in 1995, casting was a nightmare: “We really struggled to find 14 swans, but now we get hundreds of applications — it’s every young guy’s dream show.” Of the current cast, 56 per cent are graduates of one of the New Adventures’ talent development programmes.The role of the Swan was co-created by the Royal Ballet’s Adam Cooper, and ballet faces including Marcelo Gomes, Matthew Ball and Thomas Whitehead have guest-starred over the years. But Bourne has learnt that he doesn’t need big names. “To be honest, it doesn’t make any difference to the sales”, he says. “Most of the New Adventures audiences don’t know who these people are. It’s not necessary any more.”Last Thursday’s packed house was certainly more than happy with Jackson Fisch’s thuggishly tender Swan and James Lovell’s needy, neurotic Prince. The closing scene, when 14 angry swans take revenge on their former leader, is harrowing, and few choreographers have made better use of Tchaikovsky’s apotheosis with the boy prince enfolded in the wings of his beloved bird. The Lowry’s curtain falls and the woman at my side is back in the room, dabbing her eyes.Sadler’s Wells, December 3-January 26, then touring to June 7, new-adventures.netFind out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen
