Quotes of the Day

A lot of people love matthew Bourne's shows — but not as much as Matthew Bourne does. The British choreographer gleefully admits to having seen his own production of Nutcracker over 200 times this year. "I really do genuinely love watching that show, it's so entertaining," says Bourne. His pleasure at his handiwork is palpable during rehearsals for his latest hit, Play Without Words, an adaptation of the sinister, hedonistic Joseph Losey film The Servant. As dancers create an atmosphere of sex and power through twisting, pulsing movements, Bourne's eyes are shining, his foot tapping to the jazz score. He throws himself into the piece's emotions, laughing at the jokes he's seen a thousand times. "I know it seems odd, me watching my shows so much," he says. "But I enjoy them in a very heartfelt way."

So do many theater-goers, who've become hooked on his trademark touches: classic stories boldly re-imagined, with plenty of movie references, strong veins of visual humour (in Nutcracker, now playing in Sadler's Wells, the dancing cream cake is hilariously reinvented as Rudolf Valentino), a touching sense of vulnerability (the same show has Clara in a frightening Victorian orphanage) and plenty of sex (2000's The Car Man had some very steamy things happening on car bonnets).

Those qualities have made Bourne, 43, that rarest of things, a choreographer whose name sells tickets. Witness his confectionery-colored Nutcracker's blockbuster 15-week U.K. tour, and new eight-week Christmas showing. It's one of the trendiest productions playing around London this season; by the time its run ends in late January, it will have been seen by as many as 300,000 people in the U.K. "Bourne is a popular dance phenomenon on a scale not seen since Jerome Robbins in 1950s America," says Debra Craine, dance critic of the London Times.

For those who can't get enough of Bourne, the good news is that the choreographer is in the middle of a creative surge. After a well-reviewed experimental four-week run last year, Play Without Words opens at London's National Theatre this week. The show, ingeniously danced in triplicate, with three people simultaneously playing each role, will tour the U.K. between March and May, with Tokyo and U.S. tours penciled in for the summer. His Nutcracker tours Japan and Korea in the spring, and maybe the U.S. later in the year. There are plans for his searing Swan Lake to visit Paris and tour the U.K. and U.S. in late 2004. Bourne also plans to revive Highland Fling (à La Sylphide retread, with a Scottish welder seduced by a vampire) and, in 2005, choreograph a dance version of the Tim Burton movie Edward Scissorhands. Oh, and did we mention that he's slated to co-direct (with Richard Eyre) and choreograph the much-hyped Disney–Cameron Mackintosh stage show of Mary Poppins, set to debut in London next year? Busy guy.

Bourne first hit the big time when his 1995 reworking of Swan Lake — which cast men as the swans — became a smash, transferring to the West End for a record-breaking 21-week run. Broadway followed, as did international tours and more than 25 major awards. Next came Cinderella, set in the London Blitz, and Car Man, a film noir treatment of Bizet's classic. Both had major West End runs.

But the critics were not entirely impressed; many dismissed Bourne as a showman rather than a dance man, a label that has stuck. The Mail on Sunday has called him "both the best and the worst thing to have happened to British dance in the past 20 years." Rupert Christiansen, a critic for the Daily Telegraph, complains that Bourne has "dumbed down the language of dance. His choreography is so crass and repetitive it sets my teeth on edge. His success has corrupted public taste, so that lots of people won't venture further into the dance world than Bourne."

Bourne contends that his strength lies in ideas, not steps. "It's not groundbreaking choreography," he agrees, "but that's not my aim. Some choreographers create works specifically for the purpose of movement invention. But I try to be inventive with the concept, to stretch what dance can do in the theater."

It was this theatricality that attracted Disney to him for Mary Poppins, one of theaterland's most eagerly anticipated events of 2004. It will be the first time the choreographer has also directed a musical. For his admirers, that's a double treat. "Original theatermakers like Matthew aren't defined by those who came before them," says Disney Theatrical Productions president Thomas Schumacher. "They find a new language for their art, so we have to find new terms to describe them." Some old terms — like stonking showbiz hitmaker — still seem to fit the bill.

• JAMES INVERNE | London
• Choreographer Matthew Bourne goes global with a raft of crowd-pleasing new shows