English dancer and choreographer Matthew Bourne was BOTD in 1960. Born in London, he was attracted to theatre as a child, working as a ticketing agent and theatre usher after leaving school. In 1983, he started a degree course in dance at the Laban Centre, later touring with Transitions, the centre’s dance company. His career as a dancer wound down as he began to choreograph short works, setting up his own company Adventures in Motion Pictures. His big break came in 1992 when he was invited to choreograph The Nutcracker for Opera North, setting the action in a sinister Victorian orphanage. Highland Fling, his 1994 version of La Sylphide, took place in a modern-day housing project in Glasgow. He is best known for his 1995 staging of Swan Lake, reimagining swans as aggressive sexualised creatures danced by bare-chested male dancers, and creating a Freudian backstory for the sexually repressed (and gay) Prince Siegfried. An international success in London and New York, the production kickstarted a trend for queer revisionism of classical ballet repertoire, and foregrounded male dancers as objects of sexual desire. Bourne brought a similarly queer gaze to productions of The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet, and dance adaptations of the films The Servant (produced as Play Without Words), Edward Scissorhands and The Red Shoes. He also provided choreography for successful West End and Broadway productions of My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins. He lives in London with his partner Arthur Pita, a dancer and choreographer who appeared in the original Bourne production of Swan Lake.