The most iconic dance costume of recent times may be a pair of white feathery breeches on permanent display at London’s V&A museum. They’re a tribute to choreographer Matthew Bourne’s gender-flipping dance version of the ballet Swan Lake. The production, which first premiered in London in November 1995, ruffled feathers in many ways because the swans, until then female roles, were played by male dancers. It went on to become the longest running full-length dance classic in the West End and on Broadway, winning both Olivier and Tony awards.
As the show celebrates its 30th anniversary with a 2024/25 tour, Matthew Bourne tells the BBC the story of the landmark production.
“I think most people thought that when they came to see it, they were going to see men in tutus,” says Matthew Bourne, of public expectations back in 1995.
The young, London-born choreographer, then aged 35, had been given the opportunity to stage his own version of Swan Lake at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre. It was a cherished dream for him, he says, “because I’ve always loved and identified with the story”. His big idea, he recalls, “was that all the swans would be male. Everything else about the production flowed from that one simple idea”.
He explains that he found the meaning in the story through the character of the prince. “He’s constantly being told he needs to get married; his mother keeps pointing at the ring on her finger, which is ballet mime for ‘time to get married’. And he keeps saying, ‘no I’ll only get married for true love’. I always thought there was something else going on there. And that’s where the idea of male swans came from, from thinking about the prince himself. I think he’s obviously looking for something else.”
Bourne trained in dance before becoming a choreographer for television and theatre, and by the early 1990s, had form for putting his own spin on classical ballets. Like the cohort during that era known as the YBAs (Young British Artists) – which included Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas – Bourne was seen as an agent of change in his sphere. He had critical success with his version of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, where the setting was a Victorian-style orphanage. In 1994, his version of La Sylphide (called Highland Fling) was set in a modern-day housing estate in Glasgow.
Until this audacious twist on Swan Lake, ballerina Margot Fonteyn’s legendary performances as the Dying Swan had become an iconic image not just of Swan Lake, but of 20th-Century ballet itself. When it was announced that Bourne was bringing his own version, he remembers that “a lot of people thought it was a folly”.
