Happy Birthday to Tony-winning choreographer-director Matthew Bourne, born Jan. 13, 1960, in Hackney, London. He directed various amateur dance companies during his teens and enrolled at the Laban Center in Deptford, London, where he earned a degree in dance theater. After graduation, he spent two years with the school’s performance company, Transitions, before founding his own company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, with Emma Gladstone and David Massingham. For AMP, he created the award-winning ballets Nutcraker! (Olivier nomination), The Car Man (Olivier nomination), and Swan Lake (Olivier win), which also brought him Tony and Drama Desk awards for both direction and choreography when the show premiered on Broadway in 1998.
He moved into musicals with the 2001 West End revival of My Fair Lady, for which he won the Olivier for choreography. Bourne left AMP in 2002 and launched New Adventures, which premiered Play Without Words as part of the National Theatre’s Transformations Season. That production earned him an Olivier nomination for direction and the award for choreography, as well as an Olivier for best family show and Drama Desk nominations in direction and choreography for its New York run.
Bourne returned to theater with the 2004 West End premiere of Mary Poppins, winning an Olivier for choreography and a nomination for direction, as well as Tony and Drama Desk nominations for choreography when the show opened in 2006 on Broadway. In 2007, the New York production of Edward Scissorhands earned a Drama Desk Award for unique theatrical experience and brought Bourne a nomination for his choreography.
He earned further Olivier nominations for his choreography of the 2009 West End revival of Oliver! and his 2010 production of Cinderella, plus two more wins for the 2016 production of The Red Shoes, one for his choreography and one as best family show.
In 2019, Bourne won a special Olivier and in 2020 his latest competitive prize for the choreography of the West End revival of Mary Poppins. Below is that cast in “Feed the Birds / Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” at the 2019 Royal Variety Performance.