Glenn Graham & Matthew Bourne Interview: Caring for the Dancers
Title
Glenn Graham & Matthew Bourne Interview: Caring for the Dancers
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 Glenn talks about looking after the dancers whilst on tour.
Glenn: “We train every day for class. We have a ballet class or a contemporary class, as we do like an hour, an hour and a half sometimes which prepares the body. Now it’s unusual with this company because we do eight shows a week, the dancing is very physical, so for instance like a musical theatre job, most of them would come in at 5 and then go straight in and in the show “swing a leg, swing a leg”, that’s it, it’s done isn’t it? But we try to take care of our dancers. We need to warm them up physically, get their minds mentally prepared. That’s really important for us really. Generally everybody does one to two parts. Some people do three parts, so if there is someone who is off injured or ill, we’ll have somebody to come in and do their other part. We just move the casting around. It’s less panicky in a way. We don’t really have understudies as such. They go on. We train every week. On Tuesday we’re training at College Street, just near the Playhouse, so there’s a nice little studio that we use to rehearse there. Just get them all warm and then we come in here and do the tech full run through. “
Matthew: “The class is on stage the rest of the week. It’s good to be on stage because it gets you into the idea of performing that day.”
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 Glenn talks about looking after the dancers whilst on tour.
Glenn: “We train every day for class. We have a ballet class or a contemporary class, as we do like an hour, an hour and a half sometimes which prepares the body. Now it’s unusual with this company because we do eight shows a week, the dancing is very physical, so for instance like a musical theatre job, most of them would come in at 5 and then go straight in and in the show “swing a leg, swing a leg”, that’s it, it’s done isn’t it? But we try to take care of our dancers. We need to warm them up physically, get their minds mentally prepared. That’s really important for us really. Generally everybody does one to two parts. Some people do three parts, so if there is someone who is off injured or ill, we’ll have somebody to come in and do their other part. We just move the casting around. It’s less panicky in a way. We don’t really have understudies as such. They go on. We train every week. On Tuesday we’re training at College Street, just near the Playhouse, so there’s a nice little studio that we use to rehearse there. Just get them all warm and then we come in here and do the tech full run through. “
Matthew: “The class is on stage the rest of the week. It’s good to be on stage because it gets you into the idea of performing that day.”
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