As a starstruck teenager, the Nutcracker choreographer was a keen autograph hunter. And the thrill of the stage has never left him
It’s tempting to see a Hollywood trajectory, a yuletide miracle, in Sir Matthew Bourne’s life. As a teenager, almost every night, he would take the bus down to London’s West End to hang around at stage doors to collect autographs from the stars. Four or five decades on he can look back on a string of shows that have seen his own name in lights as probably the most famous and innovative choreographer and dance impresario of his generation. To prove the happy ending, having once crossed his fingers and made a wish for Barbra Streisand’s signature, he’s now on her Christmas card list. (“We get one every year,” he says, “‘From Barbra and Jim.’”)
Bourne grew up in a rented house in Walthamstow on the outer edge of north-east London and the number 38 bus into town would take him along Islington High Street. He’d look out from the top deck and think: “This is where I’ll live one day” – without the first idea of how he’d get there. Fast forward again and he now lives in the Georgian suburb in a house in which the choral arrangement for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing was written. It’s a wonderful life.
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