Matthew Bourne is a choreographer.

Bourne as a dancer

Matthew was born on 13 January 1960 in London. At the age of five or six he staged his first production. In 1982 he enrolled at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance, where he was awarded a BA. For the next year he danced with the Laban Centre's Transitions Dance Company. As a founder member of Lea Anderson 's Featherstonehaughs he created many roles within the company. Outside the field of dance he has made dances for actors including Sir Nigel Hawthorne, Dawn French and Jonathan Pryce (Oliver! in 1994). His final performance as a dancer was in January 1999 on Broadway. Since then he has been a producer.

Bourne as producer

Bourne's first professional stage production was Overlap Lovers. An Intrigue in Three Parts in 1987. Apart from a gap in 1993 he has produced musicals and ballets every year. His work on the film Billy Elliott in 2000 (the Swan Lake sequence) has probably been seen by more people than anything else he has done. His first major brush with controversy was Swan Lake in 1995, where the story was entirely re-written and the role of the swans taken by men dressed in black. The music by Tchaikovsky remained intact. This has been revived every year since then, but he no longer directs it. It is not a gay ballet, but contains homoerotic scenes. Sulky teenagers who would otherwise have resented being taken to an annual visit to a ballet suddenly became enthusiastic, writing about it in school magazines. Critics on national newspapers have reviewed it harshly, saying that the plot has become absurd and many scenes are motiveless. Similar criticism (and wild praise) greeted Nutcracker! in 2002.

The Car Man (a version of Carmen) was produced in 2000 and toured in 2001 and 2002. He produced Play Without Words in 2002 and 2003. In 2004 he was awarded an OBE.

His book Matthew Bourne and His Adventures in Motion Pictures appeared in 2004.