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Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is a contemporary ballet based on the Russian Romanticism work Swan Lake, from which it takes the music by Tchaikovsky and the broad outline of the plot. The ballet centres on a prince who feels trapped by his duties and emotionally neglected by his distant mother. At the peak of his despair, he meets a swan that embodies his desire for freedom and love. Matthew Bourne's interpretation is best known for having the traditionally female parts of the swans danced by men.
Produced by Adventures in Motion Pictures with Bourne as director and choreographer, the original ballet premiered in London at Sadler's Wells Theatre on 9 November 1995 and ran until 25 November. The original cast included Scott Ambler as the Prince, Adam Cooper as the Swan and the Stranger, Emily Piercy as the Prince's Girlfriend, and Fiona Chadwick as the Queen. The production received widespread critical acclaim and commercial success, and received the 1996 Olivier award for Best New Dance Production.
The ballet has found significant popularity and commercial success worldwide, with Bourne's choice to use male swans hailed as radical and daring. As of 2026, it is the longest-running ballet in London's West End and on Broadway theatre. It has been performed in the UK, the USA, Europe, Russia, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Israel, China and Singapore."The History of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake", from the programme from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells, London, 13 December 2006 – 21 January 2007.
To date, there have been three filmed stage productions, with the 1998 film featuring the original cast.
Scene 1 opens with the Prince being prepared for a day of official duties by chambermaids and valets.
In Scene 2, arrayed in his full dress uniform, the Prince becomes bored by a boat christening, a ribbon cutting, and other official tasks. His mother prods him to keep up appearances, even as she devotes more attention to the soldiers than she does to him. During this scene, there is a transition from the child actor playing the young Prince to the identically-dressed adult dancer who portrays the grown Prince. This now-adult Prince is introduced to a girl called "the Girlfriend". Although the girl seems foisted on him by von Rothbart, the Private Secretary, the Prince prefers her to his duty-bound life.
In Scene 3, the Queen, one of her admiring soldiers, the Private Secretary, the Prince, and the Girlfriend all appear in a theatre box, where they watch a ballet that is staged for the actual audience as well as for the characters. The ballet's backdrop (from a design for Castle Falkenstein by Christian Jank), ornate costumes, and acting parody the romantic ballets of which the original Swan Lake was an example. The Girlfriend's responses to the dance as well as her eventual dropping her purse from the royal box annoy the Queen and von Rothbart.
Scene 4 finds the Prince drinking in his private chambers in front of a mirror, to his mother's shock. A nearly violent pas de deux ensues in which he pleads for her attention and love, while she rebukes him.
The Prince then goes into the streets and into the Swank Bar, a 1970s-style disco, in Scenes Five and Six. Here is where the choreography veers from classical ballet, with jazz forms and modern dance dominating. The Prince gets into a fight with sailors at the bar, and he is thrown out into the street. In Scene Seven, he sees the Girlfriend being paid off by von Rothbart, and he is totally shattered to discover that the only person who appeared to love him is a fake. This increases his desperation and he vows to kill himself.
While sitting in the street at the end of Scene Seven the Prince imagines a group of swans flying towards him but the vision disappears. It is the first flash of the Prince's descent into mental turmoil.
Scene 2 takes place in a ballroom. It commences with the arrival of the Queen and the Prince and some formal dancing, but quickly degenerates into a debauched party of drinking and lascivious come-ons. Into this arrives the charismatic and sexually aggressive son of von Rothbart, the Private Secretary, in black leather trousers, who intensifies the sexual tension even further by flirting with every woman present, including the Queen. Each woman finds herself drawn to him and actively participates in the mutual, sometimes lewd, flirtation.
Just as in the original Swan Lake, where customarily (although not always) one ballerina performs the roles of both the white swan (Odette) and the black swan (Odile), the same ballet dancer performs the white Swan and the black-clad young von Rothbart in this version. The Prince sees something of his beloved Swan in the son, and he is very attracted to his bravado and animal magnetism but shocked by his lewdness, especially towards his mother. During bump and grind group numbers and a sequence of national dances, it becomes clear that the Queen is powerfully attracted to von Rothbart's son. His father, the Private Secretary, looks on with an increasingly triumphant approval. The Prince also tries to approach young von Rothbart, only to be rebuffed. The Prince retreats into his mind and imagines dancing intimately with him, but the Prince's confusion interrupts the fantasy, and the son's movements turn from love to violence.
The Prince imagines the Queen and young von Rothbart flaunting their growing physical affection for each other. They join with the other guests at the ball to laugh and ridicule him because of his growing distress. The Queen and young von Rothbart end their dancing with an embrace and passionate kissing. The Prince, in his fury, violently separates them and is rewarded by outrage from both and a slap from his mother. Overwhelmed by conflicted feelings, the Prince produces a pistol and threatens to shoot his mother. In an ensuing scuffle the Girlfriend tries to dissuade the Prince, while the Private Secretary draws a pistol and points it at the Prince. As shots ring out, the Girlfriend and the Prince fall to the ground, but only the Girlfriend has been hit. She lies unconscious and the Prince is dragged away, while the Queen throws herself into young von Rothbart's arms. He gives the pistol he had taken from the Prince to his father, the two of them laughing.
The plot has evolved over the years since the debut. The most conspicuous change Bourne made was to remove the subplot of the von Rothbart conspiracy to put his son on the throne. The Private Secretary now becomes just a functionary (no longer a von Rothbart counterpart, nor villain) and the Stranger is no longer shown conspiring with him. The identity of the Stranger becomes even more vague and Bourne prefers to leave him and his relationship with the Prince up to the individual interpretation of the viewer.
The Prince crawls into bed and appears to sleep. However, he begins writhing as he dreams of the troupe of swans emerging from under and behind, dancing around him. He wakes from his nightmare, checking under his bed and around his room for swans. His tortured expression and jerky movements convey the Prince in turmoil. His lead Swan then slowly emerges from within the Prince's bed. The Swan dances with the Prince and assures him of his continued affection. But, the rest of the swans turn on the lead Swan when he makes it clear that he values his relationship with the Prince more than he does them. They separate the two and begin attacking the Prince before the Swan leaps in to save him. The Swan embraces the Prince and envelops him in his wings. The swans' fury increases and their next attack dismembers the Swan, who then disappears. Heartbroken and despondent, the Prince wails in agony and collapses onto the bed. The Queen then finds her dead son's body and breaks down in tears. However, in death the Prince and the Swan are reunited, as shown by a tableau depicting the lead Swan tenderly holding the young Prince in his arms.
From 6 February until 13 April 1996, the production toured to various venues around the United Kingdom. On 11 September 1996, Swan Lake moved to the West End at the Piccadilly Theatre and ran for 120 performances, which was the longest run ever known in London for any production of a full-length ballet.
On 25 April 1997, the production was performed at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, and was later screened in the UK on Boxing Day on BBC Two
The 2013 UK and international tour included Australia and the Shanghai Culture Square.
There was a 2019 UK and international tour that included Shanghai.
In 2010, the tour returned to New York City and performed a four-week season at the New York City Centre.
The 2018-2020 US tour had a 7-week Christmas Season at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, debuted at the Kennedy Center in Washington, and concluded with its 378th and final performance on 9 February 2020 at New York City Center. The tour had performed at 34 venues, 7 countries and 4 continents with 58 dancers and crew members.
One afternoon Ondine was walking near some stables when she heard the familiar snoring of her husband. When she entered the stable, she saw Sir Lawrence lying in the arms of another woman. Kicking her husband awake, she cursed him such that he would have breath so long as he remained awake, but if he ever fell asleep his breath would be taken from him and he would die.
According to Alastair Macaulay (formerly chief dance critic of The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement and chief theatre critic of the Financial Times), the Ondine myth is said to be an image of psycho-sexual distress: the nymph is a forlorn image of repressed virginity, anxious that she will never achieve womanly fulfillment, while her feminine nemesis that leads her husband astray represents the confident seductive power that threatens her hopes. The story is double-edged: the human protagonist, in loving the nymph, transgresses against his own kind and may be punished. If, having betrayed her once, he returns to her, her kiss will bring him death; in fact, it may be this love-in-death that the man desires most.Alastair Macaulay, "Swan Lake: The Matthew Bourne version", from the programme from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, above.
Bourne's Swan Lake radically reinterprets the myth. The focus of the ballet is turned away from the Ondine character to the man – the Prince. It is the Prince who struggles against repression and hopes for liberty, and who needs love to make him safe. In addition, it is not the mortal who is unfaithful to the nymph. Rather, it is the Swan who (in Act Two) expresses love for the Prince, betrays him in the form of the Stranger (Act Three), and finally returns to him (Act Four). However, as in the Ondine myth, the sin of betrayal cannot be expiated except in death.
However, the same central themes carry through both works. Both are about doomed, forbidden love, and both feature a Prince who wishes to transcend the boundaries of everyday convention through that love. Both themes have strong ties to the life of Tchaikovsky, the ballet's composer, whose homosexuality caused a number of complications in his life.
In 2012, a new cast of dancers with Richard Winsor as the Prince and Dominic North as the Swan/the Stranger, as well as Nina Goldman, Madelaine Brennan, Steve Kirkham and Joseph Vaughan, was filmed at Sadler's Wells in 3D. The production was directed by Matthew Bourne and Ross MacGibbon. It was then premiered in Soho, London before being shown in various cinemas with a nationwide release. The film was later released on DVD.
A third stage production, featuring Liam Mower as the Prince and Will Bozier as the Swan, was filmed at Sadler's Wells in January 2019 and released in UK cinemas in 2019 September. It was later made available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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