Matthew Bourne & Glenn Graham Interview: Appreciation from Nottingham Audiences
Title
Matthew Bourne & Glenn Graham Interview: Appreciation from Nottingham Audiences
Date
14 November 2018
Description
Oral history interview with Matthew Bourne & Glenn Graham of New Adventures, a unique dance-theatre company, a regular visitor to the Theatre Royal.
What's the story?
Sir Matthew Christopher Bourne OBE was born in Hackney, London in 1960. He started training as a dancer at the age of 22. He later went on to become sole artistic director of Adventures in Motion Pictures (AMP) and subsequently his latest company New Adventures in 2002.
Glenn Graham was born in Nottingham in 1980 and was educated at Top Valley Comprehensive School and Clarendon College. He was professionally trained at the Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance before joining New Adventures in 2003.
In this interview Matthew talks about how Nottingham audiences have grown to appreciate his shows.
"This is interesting with Nottingham. It is a good audience. And it’s an audience that I feel we’ve grown, we’ve developed. Because I spoke to Robert Noble who I run the Company with this morning. I said I’m having this heritage interview, can you think of any things that I could say and he said well one of the things is that we’ve come to Nottingham regularly over the years and it wasn’t as it always is, but he said that sales now are always great.
This is the first venue of our Swan Lake tour that we’ve done so far that’s sold out in advance. So that’s just something about Nottingham audiences and how they’ve developed with us and they’ve grown with us and they do love the work. And they book in advance. It sounds like, OK, doesn’t this happen all the time? No it doesn’t. For dance and a lot of theatre, it does not sell as well as you would like it to. So we’re very lucky. We get a bit blasé and could get used to it, but we shouldn’t because it’s not always the case and I think Nottingham has taken us to their hearts really, I feel, over this long period of time that we’ve been coming, so that we know we can come here now and we’ve got a guaranteed following of people who want to see the next show or want to bring their friends or family or people that have not seen us before. You get a lot of that. I’ve noticed in audiences. I could hear it last night. They all talk about when they last saw the piece. Which pieces have you seen? Have you seen this piece? I wanted to bring my friend, I wanted to bring my mother to see it. I got some Tweets last night – I’ve brought my 82 year old mother. She’s never been to dance before and she absolutely loved it. Things like that. So people get excited about discovering something new, for them, which is dance, dance theatre, the sort of thing that we do. And they feel that they want to share it with people, which is lovely."
Glenn Graham was born in Nottingham in 1980 and was educated at Top Valley Comprehensive School and Clarendon College. He was professionally trained at the Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance before joining New Adventures in 2003.
In this interview Matthew talks about how Nottingham audiences have grown to appreciate his shows.
"This is interesting with Nottingham. It is a good audience. And it’s an audience that I feel we’ve grown, we’ve developed. Because I spoke to Robert Noble who I run the Company with this morning. I said I’m having this heritage interview, can you think of any things that I could say and he said well one of the things is that we’ve come to Nottingham regularly over the years and it wasn’t as it always is, but he said that sales now are always great.
This is the first venue of our Swan Lake tour that we’ve done so far that’s sold out in advance. So that’s just something about Nottingham audiences and how they’ve developed with us and they’ve grown with us and they do love the work. And they book in advance. It sounds like, OK, doesn’t this happen all the time? No it doesn’t. For dance and a lot of theatre, it does not sell as well as you would like it to. So we’re very lucky. We get a bit blasé and could get used to it, but we shouldn’t because it’s not always the case and I think Nottingham has taken us to their hearts really, I feel, over this long period of time that we’ve been coming, so that we know we can come here now and we’ve got a guaranteed following of people who want to see the next show or want to bring their friends or family or people that have not seen us before. You get a lot of that. I’ve noticed in audiences. I could hear it last night. They all talk about when they last saw the piece. Which pieces have you seen? Have you seen this piece? I wanted to bring my friend, I wanted to bring my mother to see it. I got some Tweets last night – I’ve brought my 82 year old mother. She’s never been to dance before and she absolutely loved it. Things like that. So people get excited about discovering something new, for them, which is dance, dance theatre, the sort of thing that we do. And they feel that they want to share it with people, which is lovely."
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Jennifer Sherwood and Diane Jones
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
