Sir Matthew Bourne OBE
Artistic Director
Overview
Sir Matthew Bourne OBE is widely hailed as the UK’s most popular and successful choreographer and director.
Since 1986, he has been creating and directing dance for musicals, theatre, film as well as his own highly successful, award-winning companies.
Matthew is the creator of the world’s longest running ballet production, and has been recognised by numerous international awards. He was knighted in the Queen’s New Year Honours 2016 for services to dance, and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award – one of the most coveted honours in the world of dance – in recognition of his outstanding services to the art of ballet.
Credits
THE WORKS
- Spitfire – 1988
- The Infernal Galop – 1989
- Town & Country – 1991
- Watch with Mother – 1991
- Deadly Serious – 1992
- Percy of Fitzrovia – 1992
- Nutcracker! – 1992
- Highland Fling – 1994
- Swan Lake – 1995
- Cinderella – 1997
- The Car Man – 2000
- Play Without Words – 2002
- Edward Scissorhands – 2005
- Dorian Gray – 2008
- Lord of the Flies – 2011
- Early Adventures – 2012
- Sleeping Beauty – 2012
- The Red Shoes – 2016
- Romeo and Juliet – 2019
- The Midnight Bell – 2021
FILM & TV
- Drip: A Narcissistic Love Story – 1993 BBC TV
- Late Flowering Lust – 1993 BBC TV
- Swan Lake – 1995, 2011 & 2019
- Nutcracker! – 2001
- Matthew Bourne's Christmas – 2012 Channel 4
- The Car Man – 2001 & 2015
- Sleeping Beauty – 2013
- Cinderella – 2017
- Romeo and Juliet – 2019
- Nutcracker! – 2022
- Edward Scissorhands: Matthew Bourne’s Dance Version of Tim Burton’s Classic – 2024
Photos & Videos
News
Biography
Sir Matthew Bourne OBE is firmly established as the UK’s most popular and successful choreographer and director.
As the Artistic Director of New Adventures, one of the great British cultural success stories of recent times, he is responsible for creating an enormous new audience for dance countrywide.
For nearly 40 years he has been creating and directing dance for musicals, theatre and film as well as his own groundbreaking, award-winning dance company.
Matthew is the creator of the world’s longest running ballet production, a record-breaking nine-time Olivier Award winner, and the only British director to have won the Tony Award for both Best Choreographer and Best Director of a Musical.
He has been recognised by over 40 international awards, including following Dame Margot Fonteyn as only the second dance recipient of the Hamburg Shakespeare Prize for the Arts and being the first recipient, in the arts category, of The British Inspiration Award. He is also the proud recipient of the Evening Standard Award, South Bank Show Award, Time Out Special Award, Drama Desk Award, six Los Angles Drama Critic Awards, the Gene Kelly Legacy Award and the Astaire Award for Dance on Broadway.
In 2007 he received a Special Theatre Managers Association Award for services to dance touring and audience development. He was awarded the OBE for Services to Dance in 2001, followed by a Knighthood in 2016. The same year he was given the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award in recognition of his outstanding services to the art of ballet at a private audience with HM Queen Elizabeth, at Buckingham Palace.
Matthew Bourne is the world's most popular living dance maker.
Time Magazine
Matthew started his dance training at the comparatively late age of 22. He studied Dance Theatre and Choreography at The Laban Centre (now Trinity Laban) graduating in 1985 and spending a further year with the college’s performance company Transitions. Matthew danced professionally for 14 years creating many roles in his own work.
As Artistic Director of his first company, Adventures in Motion Pictures from 1987 until 2002 Matthew created many signature works including Spitfire (1988), The Infernal Galop (1989), Town and Country (1991), Deadly Serious (1992), Nutcracker! (1992), Highland Fling (1994), Swan Lake (1995), Cinderella (1997) and The Car Man (2000).
Most of these iconic productions have been revived for New Adventures, which was launched by Matthew and his Co-Director, Robert Noble, in 2002. Ground-breaking new productions were added to the repertoire including Play Without Words (2002 – a co-production with the National Theatre), Edward Scissorhands (2005), Dorian Gray (2008 and 2013 in Tokyo), Lord Of The Flies (2011 – Director Only), Early Adventures (2012 – a compilation of his early work) and, completing his Tchaikovsky trilogy, Sleeping Beauty in 2012. In 2016, New Adventures presented the World Premiere of Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes, based on the classic Powell & Pressburger film with music by Bernard Herrmann. The Red Shoes performed to sell out audiences across the UK and won two Olivier Awards in 2017 for Best Entertainment and Best Theatre Choreographer.
2019 saw the premiere of Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet, a typically unique take on the Shakespeare classic, which gave the brightest dance talent from across the UK the chance to perform and create alongside the New Adventures company. 2021 saw the World Premiere of Bourne’s 13th full-length production, The Midnight Bell, inspired by the novels of the English author, Patrick Hamilton, which went on to be nominated for 5 National Dance Awards, winning the award for Best Modern Choreography.
New Adventures has become the most successful and busiest dance company in the UK and is a major exporter of British dance across the world with particularly special relationships in the USA, Japan, China, Italy and France.
The most popular choreographer of theatrical dance in the western world
The New Yorker
His film work includes many adaptations of his stage work including Swan Lake (1996 Emmy nomination, 2011 in 3D and 2019), The Car Man (2001 and 2015), Nutcracker! (2003 and 2022) Matthew Bourne’s Christmas (2012), Sleeping Beauty (2016), Cinderella (2017), Romeo and Juliet (2019) TheRed Shoes (2020) and Edward Scissorhands (2024). Original film work includes the John Betjeman inspired Late Flowering Lust (1993) with Sir Nigel Hawthorne.
Matthew was the subject of a South Bank Show in 1997, a BBC Imagine documentary in 2012 and a Channel 4 documentary, Bourne to Dance, which was broadcast on Christmas Day 2001. His production of Swan Lake features in Stephen Daldry’s hit film Billy Elliot. In 2004, he was Sue Lawley’s castaway in the iconic radio favourite, Desert Island Discs.
Matthew is also an award-winning West End and Broadway choreographer; a thirty year relationship with legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh has resulted in the globally successful musicals Oliver! (Palladium/Sam Mendes 1994, Drury Lane 2009 and Chichester/West End 2024), My Fair Lady (National Theatre/Trevor Nunn, 2002 - Olivier Award) and Mary Poppins (West End/Richard Eyre 2004) for which he has won two Olivier Awards for Best Theatre Choreographer, with Stephen Mear (2005 and 2020) and two Tony nominations when it opened on Broadway in 2006.
Other theatre and dance work includes As You Like It (RSC/John Caird 1989), Children of Eden (West End/John Caird 1990), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Aix en Provence/Robert Carsen 1989), The Tempest (NYT), Show Boat (Malmo Stadsteater, Sweden 1990), Peer Gynt (Barbican/Yukio Ninagawa), Watch With Mother (NYDC), Boutique and The Infernal Galop (Images of Dance and The Sarasota Ballet), Watch Your Step (Irving Berlin Gala), French and Saunders Live in 2000 (UK tour), South Pacific (Trevor Nunn/NT 2002) Dearest Love (Ballet Boyz), and Highland Fling (Scottish Ballet and Ballet Central)
In 1999 Faber and Faber published Matthew Bourne and his Adventures inMotion Pictures, edited by theatre and dance writer, Alastair Macaulay, and a new edition was published in recognition of Bourne’s 25th Anniversary Celebrations in 2012.
Matthew Bourne has inspired a generation to dance
The Sunday Times
In addition to being a prolific choreographer, Matthew supports the wider dance industry and its future. Since 2008 New Adventures has delivered projects and workshops for people of all ages and abilities to thousands worldwide; and as part of Bourne’s ambitions to support the next generation of dancers and choreographers, New Adventures has developed an acclaimed series of talent-development initiatives including TheNew Adventures Choreographer Award (NACA), Cygnet School, Swan School and Summer Adventures.
Matthew is a proud Associate Artist of both Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles and Sadler’s Wells where, as Resident Company, New Adventures have played record-breaking extended Christmas seasons since 2002. In 1997 Matthew was made an Honorary Fellow of his former college, The Laban Centre, becoming a Companion of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in 2012. He has seven Honorary Doctorates from The Open University, and the De Montfort, Plymouth, Kingston and Roehampton Universities, as well as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In June 2018 Matthew received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from University of Oxford (along with Martin Scorsese!) He is also a Companion of Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and a proud patron of many organisations, including Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, The Arts Educational School, Laine Theatre Arts, CREATE and is an Ambassador for the Theatres Trust.
In 2014 Matthew Bourne was awarded the prestigious De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement at the National Dance Awards and later that year saw the opening of the Matthew Bourne Theatre, named in his honour, at his former school in East London, Sir George Monoux College. In 2015 he became the first dance figure to be given The Stage Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre presented by the UK Theatre Awards.
In 2017 Sir Matthew was presented with the inaugural Trailblazer in Dance and Theatre Award from The International Institute of Dance and Theatre. At the 2019 Olivier Awards he was presented with The Special Award, in recognition of his extraordinary achievements in dance. His ninth Olivier Award in 2020 (for Mary Poppins) makes Sir Matthew the winner of the most awards in Olivier Award history.
Recent work includes directing Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends starring Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga (West End 2023/Los Angeles & Broadway 2025). In Summer 2024, Matthew directed Cameron Mackintosh’s new hit production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! for Chichester Festival Theatre followed by its transfer into the West End later that year.
Awards & Honours
Associate Artist
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Associate Artist and CTGLA Honoree 2024
Center Theatre Group Los Angeles
Best Modern Choreography - Winner
for the Midnight Bell - National Dance Awards 2023
Special Olivier Award
Olivier Awards 2019
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters -University of Oxford 2018
Choreography Award
for The Red Shoes - Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards 2017
Best Modern Choreography Nomination
for The Red Shoes – National Dance Awards 2017
Best Theatre Choreographer
for The Red Shoes – Olivier Awards 2017
Best Entertainment
for The Red Shoes – Olivier Awards 2017
Trailblazer in Dance and Theatre Award
from the International Institute of Dance and Theatre - March 2017
Critics' Circle Distinguished Service to Art Award
December 2016
The Gene Kelly Legacy Award
from Dizzy Feet Foundation - September 2016
Honorary Doctorate (Arts) - Royal Conservatoire of Scotland 2016
Queen Elizabeth II Coronation (QEII) Award
in Recognition of Outstanding Services to the Art of Ballet – June 2016
Knighthood for Services to Dance
New Years Honours 2016
The UK Theatre Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre
2015
Primio Ravenna Festival 2015
Ravenna Festival Highest Honour - Previous recipients include Rostropovich, Ennio Morricone, Riccardo Muti and Pierre Boulez
The Sir George Monoux Founders Award 2014
Presented at the Dedication ceremony of the Matthew Bourne Theatre at Monoux College, Walthamstow, London
Dance Film Association "Dance in Focus" Award 2013
Given for "Persistance of Vision, Drive and Artistry"
De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement
National Dance Awards 2013
LIPA Companion 2012
(Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts) Presented by Sir Paul Mccartney
Companion
Trinity Laban conservatoire of Music and Dance 2011
Honorary Doctorate (Arts) - Roehampton University 2011
Honorary Doctorate (Arts) - Kingston University 2011
Honorary Doctorate (Arts) - Plymouth University 2010
The British Inspiration Award 2010
Winner in 'Arts' category
Theatre Managers Special Award (TMA) for Individual Achievement 2007
for Services to Dance Touring and Audience Development
Honorary Doctorate (Arts) - De Montfort University 2007
Honorary Doctorate (Arts) - Open University 2000
Best Theatre Choreographer
for Play Without Words – Olivier Awards 2003
Hamburg Shakespeare Prize for the Arts 2003
Only the second recipient from the dance world in over 50 Years, the other being legendary ballerina, Dame Margot Fonteyn
Order of the British Empire (OBE)
for Services to Dance 2001
Astaire Award 1999
Special Award for Direction, Choreography and Concept of Swan Lake
Tony Awards for Choreographer and Director
for Swan Lake 1999
Honorary Fellow
The Laban Centre 1997
South Bank Show Award 1996
Time out Special Award 1996
Matthew Bourne with his parents in 2001 after receiving his Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Services to Dance
Musical Theatre
Sondheim's Old Friends – Nominated for Best Entertainment, Olivier Awards 2024
Oliver!Nominated for Best Choreography – Olivier Awards 2010
My Fair Lady Winner Best Theatre Choreographer – Olivier Awards 2002
Mary Poppins Winner Best Theatre Choreographer – Olivier Awards Nominated Best Director (with Richard Eyre) – Olivier Awards
Nominated Outstanding Choreography – Tony Awards
Winner Best Director and Best Choreography - Green Room Awards, Melbourne
Winner Best Director and Best Choreography – Helpmann Awards, Sydney