The 25th anniversary of Matthew Bourne’s company New Adventures was 2012, and was perhaps one of the busiest in the company’s history. With the continued success of Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty in 2013, it seems there is no stopping the contemporary, theatrical company.
New Adventures recently announced that Sleeping Beauty will tour the United States from September this year, playing two week seasons in Cleveland (Playhousesquare), New York (City Center) and Los Angeles (Ahmanson Theatre) in addition to a week-long engagement at the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Opening at the Civic Center in Des Moines on 27 September, the three month tour will also travel to Schenectady (Proctors) and Charlotte(Blumenthal Performing Arts). The US tour will follow the current record-breaking UK tour of the production, which is also due to visit The Ravenna Festival in Italy (29 May – 2 June) and the company’s fifth visit to The Chekhov International Festival in Moscow (11 -16 June).
Holiday plans have also been announced, with the original cast of Sleeping Beauty being filmed at the Bristol Hippodrome in May for later broadcast on UK and International television over the Christmas period. This will be followed by a subsequent DVD release: the film will be directed by Ross MacGibbon, who has collaborated many times with Matthew Bourne on previous award-winning New Adventures films, including the recent Imagine Documentary, “A Beauty Is Born”.
In the unveiling of another production for the company, Scottish Ballet will be presenting Highland Fling having been granted the rights to perform it. Highland Fling was originally produced in 1994, and was revived in 2005 before the exclusive 2013 Scottish Ballet production as an imaginative reworking of the classic romantic ballet La Sylphide with a wickedly wry Scotch twist.