Matthew Bourne

* British choreographer of "Cinderella," at the Ahmanson Theatre through May 23. No-Driving Range: I'm staying downtown in an apartment building that's convenient for getting to the theater. But the big problem for me here is that I don't drive. When I get back to London I think I'm going to learn. After Work: We tend to go down to Otto's, the restaurant at the Music Center just below the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, for a drink.

The new 2013-14 season of Dance at the Music Center will feature works by choreographers Matthew Bourne, Ethan Stiefel and Alexei Ratmansky. The season, which the Music Center announced this week, will also include return appearances by Ballet Preljocaj and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The dance series -- whose full title is Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center -- will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, unless otherwise noted. As previously announced, Nederlands Dans Theater will present "Chamber" (Oct.

The new 2013-14 season of Dance at the Music Center will feature works by choreographers Matthew Bourne, Ethan Stiefel and Alexei Ratmansky. The season, which the Music Center announced this week, will also include return appearances by Ballet Preljocaj and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The dance series -- whose full title is Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center -- will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, unless otherwise noted. As previously announced, Nederlands Dans Theater will present "Chamber" (Oct.

"Swan Lake," in the hands of the Mariinsky Ballet, is an experience of classicism that few can duplicate 117 years after the ballet's premiere. The St. Petersburg dancers and orchestra returned Tuesday with their three-hour-plus, Petipa-Ivanov classic to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts (continuing through Sunday). In rougher quarters, "Swan Lake" dives into war horse territory. To contemporary choreographers, such as Matthew Bourne and Mats Ek, its anachronistic story of love between a prince and an enchanted swan-woman has been fertile and successful ground for outrageous revisionism.

London-based choreographer Matthew Bourne has always had an imaginary foot in America. A preadolescent autograph hunter, longtime devotee of the Hollywood musical and lifelong movie fan, Bourne and his company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, have recently found success--and a home away from home--in Los Angeles and New York. But his 1995 all-male "Swan Lake" was set against the psychological backdrop of British stiff-upper-lip royalty and 1997's "Cinderella" took place in 1940s blitz-era London.

LEZ BROTHERSTON loves a challenge. That's one reason he's the perfect match for Matthew Bourne, the choreographer-provcateur whose wide-ranging imagination might daunt a less creative collaborator. Bourne has become a pop icon famous for spinning fresh tales out of well-trodden classics.

Matthew Bourne has been to Broadway and back, and he can't wait to get to L.A. "It's nice coming to a place where people are very caring and welcoming," says the choreographer by phone from London. It has been two years since the U.S. premiere--at the Music Center's Ahmanson Theatre--of Bourne's irreverent version of "Swan Lake," in which he made male beasts of the sacred swans and brought dance theater to the masses. "The audiences were incredibly warm.

There's never really been a term for Matthew Bourne's particular brand of storytelling -- a cinema-influenced, live-on-stage mixture of dance and theater, with few fancy steps and never many words. Yet in the last decade, the London-based Bourne's own story has been one of acclaim in both Britain and the United States as a theatrical master of vibrant, original and crowd-pleasing entertainment.

It's an unusually fine spring morning, and Matthew Bourne is in what passes for supreme commander mode. Assembled in front of him, on the floor of a rehearsal studio at the London Theatre Centre, are his troops: the members of his own Adventures in Motion Pictures dance company. Bourne and AMP have already established one beachhead--they've managed to turn their update of the 100-year-old "Swan Lake" into a six-month phenomenon in London's dog-eat-dog West End theater district.

"Swan Lake," in the hands of the Mariinsky Ballet, is an experience of classicism that few can duplicate 117 years after the ballet's premiere. The St. Petersburg dancers and orchestra returned Tuesday with their three-hour-plus, Petipa-Ivanov classic to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts (continuing through Sunday). In rougher quarters, "Swan Lake" dives into war horse territory. To contemporary choreographers, such as Matthew Bourne and Mats Ek, its anachronistic story of love between a prince and an enchanted swan-woman has been fertile and successful ground for outrageous revisionism.

CHOREOGRAPHER Matthew Bourne is best known for flipping his sources: taking a ballet, an opera, a feature film and switching period, location, character-gender until it yields a powerful, newly engaging dance drama. But Tim Burton's 1990 film "Edward Scissorhands" seemed to need no radical reinterpretation.

LEZ BROTHERSTON loves a challenge. That's one reason he's the perfect match for Matthew Bourne, the choreographer-provcateur whose wide-ranging imagination might daunt a less creative collaborator. Bourne has become a pop icon famous for spinning fresh tales out of well-trodden classics.

ENDANGERED outsiders are central to the acclaimed full-evening dance dramas of Matthew Bourne, whether they're an alienated prince ("Swan Lake"), a shellshocked pilot ("Cinderella"), a reckless bisexual drifter ("The Car Man") or a waif trapped in a dismal orphanage ("Nutcracker!"). However, the most helpless outsider in Bourne's body of work just might be the childlike title character in "Edward Scissorhands," coming to the Ahmanson Theatre for a three-week run starting Dec. 12.

Alan Vincent is a man's man. Tall and virile-looking in a Clive Owen kind of way, with a disarming smile, this 30-year-old Briton relishes any opportunity to knock back a single-malt whiskey. But these days, in his non-imbibing hours, he projects a somewhat less macho image -- that of the sexy, insinuating lead swan in Matthew Bourne's singular interpretation of "Swan Lake."

I read with genuine excitement Matthew Bourne's excellent commentary on his fine production "Play Without Words" ("What More Is There to Say?," April 10). As a ballet choreographer who has been crafting original narrative ballets for most of my career, it was a very welcome sign that concert dance may finally be returning to dramatic story. My ballet company, De'Ath Ballet, has been quietly producing narrative ballet for some 20 years. . I have often felt that I am operating in an absolute vacuum, and, as Bourne so correctly points out, almost no choreographers attempt it. Production costs are so high in these tough economic times that ballet companies steer away from new narratives in fear of poor box office.

Rigid class structures and the fantasies they inspire make for potent melodrama and equally exciting movement theater. From August Strindberg's "Miss Julie" to Jean Genet's "The Maids," intense parables of forbidden love and social revolt have not only become stage classics but also staples of the international ballet repertory.

I read with genuine excitement Matthew Bourne's excellent commentary on his fine production "Play Without Words" ("What More Is There to Say?," April 10). As a ballet choreographer who has been crafting original narrative ballets for most of my career, it was a very welcome sign that concert dance may finally be returning to dramatic story. My ballet company, De'Ath Ballet, has been quietly producing narrative ballet for some 20 years. . I have often felt that I am operating in an absolute vacuum, and, as Bourne so correctly points out, almost no choreographers attempt it. Production costs are so high in these tough economic times that ballet companies steer away from new narratives in fear of poor box office.

ENDANGERED outsiders are central to the acclaimed full-evening dance dramas of Matthew Bourne, whether they're an alienated prince ("Swan Lake"), a shellshocked pilot ("Cinderella"), a reckless bisexual drifter ("The Car Man") or a waif trapped in a dismal orphanage ("Nutcracker!"). However, the most helpless outsider in Bourne's body of work just might be the childlike title character in "Edward Scissorhands," coming to the Ahmanson Theatre for a three-week run starting Dec. 12.

Often a haven for the most groundbreaking theater, music and dance in the Southland, Royce Hall isn't exactly "Nutcracker" territory. Indeed, no production of the Christmas classic has been seen there since the mid-1980s -- and that anomaly was not a UCLA-sponsored event. But now through New Year's weekend, the UCLA Live series is decking Royce Hall with Matthew Bourne's startling anti-"Nutcracker" "Nutcracker!

There's never really been a term for Matthew Bourne's particular brand of storytelling -- a cinema-influenced, live-on-stage mixture of dance and theater, with few fancy steps and never many words. Yet in the last decade, the London-based Bourne's own story has been one of acclaim in both Britain and the United States as a theatrical master of vibrant, original and crowd-pleasing entertainment.