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The Arts Intel Report

Matthew Bourne's New Adventures Festival

Mar 5 – Apr 4, 2021
131 W 55th St, New York, NY 10019, USA

A ballet by Matthew Bourne really is an adventure. He takes classics we know and love, and finds in them contours and contemporary meanings we didn’t know were there. His first theatrical coup came in the Tchaikovsky standard Swan Lake, when he made its bevy of swans male. Where once were cool corps girls in white tutus, now were hot men in fleecy white knickers. And it worked. It gave a different and compelling dimension to the prince’s ambivalence. City Center, which has presented the work of Bourne for years now, offers this month-long digital festival of four ballets in rotation: Swan Lake, The Car Man, Cinderella, and a rapturously reinvented Romeo and Juliet. Available on-demand. —L.J.