Matthew Bourne’s Early Adventures, Sadler’s Well.

Matthew Bourne’s company celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with a comedic festival of works from the1980s and 1990s. The triple bill, entitled Early Adventures, displays the company at its hilarious and talented best.

Bourne’s signature work Spitfire, an “advertisement divertissement”, parodies the 19th Century Pas de Quatre which showcased leading ballerinas of the time. Taking inspiration from underwear advertising, Bourne puts four narcissistic men centre stage wearing in a variety of vests, boxers, Y-fronts and thermal pants. To the grand orchestral music of Alexander Glazunov and Leon Minkus, dancers flex their biceps, wiggle their bottoms and create macho group poses. The piece is incredibly clever in its appealing choreography and references to classical technique, but what stands out most is its irresistible humour and charm.

Town and Country was created in 1991 and hasn’t been performed since. It shows a variety of scenes from a bygone British era with a mixture of music from Edward Elgar to Noel Coward and others. In town, there is a woman being bathed and dressed by a maid, a suited gentleman who sits stitching embroidery, couples on a date at the cinema and six scooter-riders beeping their horns and ringing their bells. In the country, milk maids, clog dancers, fox-hunters and golf-players all come to life. There is even a hedgehog’s funeral. The choreography is an eclectic assortment of jollity, romance and poignancy which typifies English life in Bourne’s unparalleled style.

Final work, Infernal Galop, takes its name from the little-known correct title of the famous can-can music. Described as “a French dance with English subtitles”, it satirises British perceptions of the snail-eating characters found across the Channel. Varied vignettes display Parisian women as they elegantly drape themselves with scarves and sailors serenading a dressing-gowned merman to hit song La Mer. Less expected is the men that observe each other at a street pissoir and proceed to simulate gay sex before being hilariously and rudely interrupted by a beret-wearing and maraca-wielding street band. Infernal Galop is another example of Bourne’s skill in taking ordinary situations and using wit and powerful choreography to create really entertaining dance.

Company New Adventures is in fine form throughout with performers both technically-skilled and able to convey the choreography’s drama and comedy. This triple bill shows why Bourne has had such a successful 25 years and no doubt we can look forward to another 25 years of surprises.

 

Laura Dodge is a 25-year-old dance teacher and freelance writer working in London. She is also studying for an MA in Ballet Studies, currently writing a dissertation on stage presence in ballet students. She is looking forward to seeing and reviewing lots of dance at the Edinburgh Fringe.

 She reviewed Matthew Bourne’s Early Adventures at Sadler’s Wells. The judges praised her “ability to describe the event in vivid detail without wasting words”.