Contextual:
Matthew Bourne is widely hailed as the UK’s most popular and successful Choreographer/Director. He is the creator of the world’s longest running ballet production (Swan Lake) a five - time Olivier Award winner, and the only British director to have won the Best Direction of a Musical and Best Choreographer.
Surprisingly he started training as a dancer at the comparatively late age of 22, and graduated in 1985 after studying Dance Theatre and Choreography at Laban. He found dance to be his happiest form of self-expression and loves the fact that you can express the things you want to say, using movement. This is seen in Carman as Bourne expressed what was going on during the 1960’s into his dance. Things such as homosexuality, affairs, and women’s movement were all relevant during this time and he took this into account by adding these things into the storyline.
Matthew danced professionally for 14 years creating many roles in his own work. Matthew Bourne was the artistic director of his first company, Adventures In Motion Pictures, from 1987 until 2002. During this time, the company choreographed a number of award winning productions and became well known for their outstanding performances. The Carman won an Evening Standard Award for "Musical Event of 2000".
The production we are studying is ‘The Car Man” which was originally produced by Matthews first company ‘ Adventures in Motion Pictures’ and was previewed for the first time on 16th May 2000 at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, and was subsequently staged at the Old Vic in London in September of that year. Since then it has won Award for "Musical Event of 2000" and was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance.
The music for the production is based on Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin's