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Matthew Hart Members of the London Ballet Circle and Friends of New Adventures joined Allison Potts in warmly welcoming Matthew Hart. Allison began with a quote from Martin Harvey, First Soloist, Royal Ballet: He made a piece for White Lodge when I was 13-14 years. When he came to do Peter and the Wolf, which happened when I was at the UpperSchool, he wanted me to do the Wolf. It was a big success and it was videoed. Anthony Dowell was a part of it, he was the Director of the Company at the time, and I think he pretty much offered me my job in the Company at the end of the first show of Peter and the Wolf. So that was a huge boost for me – quite apart from having a creative work on me so young. So I have a lot to thank Matthew for.” (Ballet Association 1 Feb 08) AP: Who was your mentor? AP: At 16 you got a place at the Royal Ballet School which was financed partly by an award sponsored by Cosmopolitan magazine and C&A which also initiated your reputation as a choreographer. MH: Yes, when I was at Arts Educational School I had always had an interest in creating dance. It was a great training at Arts Educational School. You did everything: singing, music, acting and all the dance styles and we also had the chance to be creative. I choreographed a lot at Arts Ed. I only found out about the C&A Cosmo Award about three weeks before the competition. By then I had got my place at the Royal Ballet School and my parents were both doing two jobs each throughout my five years of training at Arts Ed. In fact they continued to do that through my early training at the Royal Ballet School too. This competition came up and it was an opportunity to win £3,000. I had about two weeks to prepare. I had never considered myself a great classical dancer so I decided I would make up a solo on myself doing all the things I thought I did best and so it was a mix of ballet, modern, jazz and a bit of disco thrown in. It sounds clichéd but I worked it out in my bedroom in front of the full length mirror then rehearsed it for a couple of weeks then did the competition. I remember warming up for the competition. There was this guy next to me also warming up and he was so flexible and had these beautiful feet – we all know how important that is in ballet – and I didn’t have these attributes. I remember looking at him and thinking ‘I don’t stand a chance in this competition.’ But I had heart and soul and I danced my little socks off and I won the competition. It was absolutely amazing. Not only did I win it on my performance as a dancer but I also won it as a choreographer. I don’t know if anyone here saw Street, my first professional ballet for Birmingham Royal Ballet, but my solo from the C&A Cosmo Award was in it and danced by Vincent Redmond as I always wanted to create something for that whole piece of music – so it finally got an outing, outside that competition. AP: You joined the Royal Ballet in 1991. What were your early roles? When I first got into the Company I danced the Jester in Cinderella and Squirrel Nutkin – for my sins – with a huge costume which gave me a stress fracture in my shin. And Bratfisch – thanks for reminding me, it was a long time ago! I was in The Judas Tree in my second year in the Company and this was created on me – amongst other people. It was great to be involved in it. I learnt Puck but never actually got to do it, which was a shame. I have looked back at the period of my life and now have different feelings about it now than I did back then. I was very lucky. I remember when I was at the Royal Ballet School and both Peter Wright and Anthony Dowell wanted me for their respective companies and they gave me a choice of which company I wanted to go to. I really love London so I chose to stay here but Anthony Dowell did say to me “Your career will move more slowly in the Royal Ballet than it would do if you were in Birmingham – in Birmingham you would get a lot more opportunities both as a dancer and choreographer.” But I chose London because I knew I would be happier living here. AP: From quite early in your career at the Royal Ballet you were being considered as one of its best young choreographers. You were given the opportunity to choreograph for the Company, using music which Sir Kenneth had commissioned shortly before his death. MH: I joined the Royal Ballet in 1991 and in October 1992 Kenneth MacMillan died. A slot in the programme had been reserved for him in the early 1993 season and he had agreed a commission with Brian Elias, who had written the music for The Judas Tree. Brian was going to write a new score for Kenneth and payments had already been made. When that slot came free, the Company wondered what it was going to do with it. By that time I had already choreographed Street for the Birmingham Royal Ballet earlier in the year and I had choreographed Simple Symphony for the Royal Ballet School, which had been a huge success. So I think Anthony thought “Matthew’s ready” so he threw me in at the deep end. Not only that, I had this commissioned score. I was given carte blanche in that I could do exactly what I wanted. It was quite scary. Choreographing a ballet to an existing piece of music is one thing but to take on a composer and create a new score was something else. When I had choreographed previously I had always chosen music I absolutely adored and which I could see very clearly that dance would lend itself to. However, here was something which had yet to be created and that scared me a bit. The Judas Tree score had some pretty bits but it was a strange score and it wasn’t my favourite bit of dance music. I met Brian and he was a rather introverted and very serious man and I was an incredibly precocious and gregarious 21 year old so we were and odd match. However, he was very sweet and somehow we devised a kind of abstract ballet based on opening the season, called Fanfare. I thought I would go for something simple rather than too heavy going. I just picked a few of my favourite dancers from the Company and got going. I was very conventional in my commission with Brian because I said to him “Please can I have really beautiful tunes?” and he did give me a lovely score. It’s only short - 15-20 minutes long - but I really enjoyed doing that ballet and I was really quite sad that it only had the one outing. For the first attempt on the Opera House stage it wasn’t bad. AP: It must have been a nerve-wracking process though. MH: Yes, it was but you know what it’s like when you are that age, you are fearless. You think the world is your oyster and I was placed in this amazing position. Without wishing to sound too arrogant, it seemed like everyone adored me! I just felt blessed to be there and doing it. Of course there was another side to it. Although I say it felt like everyone adored me, I had a very good relationship with the management of the Royal Ballet but I didn’t have such a good relationship with my peers. One of the problems with being promoted to being a choreographer at such an early age with such responsibility was that it isolated me from my peers. It put me in a position of power which I really tried not to abuse but it upset a lot of people - having this 21 year old telling them what to do. There were all these people thinking “Who are you to tell us what to do?” But I was very clear what I wanted and really believed in it. What I was aiming to achieve was not just for my own benefit but I wanted the best for all the people working with me. That was difficult to make people understand. I think they just thought I was really arrogant, precocious and annoying and that the responsibility had gone to my head. So that was a very difficult side of being a choreographer. It was also one of the big deciding factors when I left the Royal Ballet. One of the fantasies of about being in a big company is that it is like being in a big family and everyone is very supportive of one another and its lot of fun. The fun for me was when I was dancing and when I was being creative – that was the high point. My relationships with a lot of the people I worked with were not such fun and that troubled me greatly. That was one of the reasons I moved on. Although in one sense it was my home, and I still have regrets about leaving and start to have thoughts about wanting to go back, at the time I didn’t feel accepted by my peers there and that was very painful. Although to the outside world it looked like I was very successful, I was actually very unhappy there. AP: As a choreographer yourself, did that mean other choreographers did not choose you to be in their new works? I also felt I was being pigeon-holed as a cute character dancer and I thought ‘How much longer can I go on doing the Jester and Squirrel Nutkin? I don’t want to be doing these things in five years time. I want to move on. I think I have more to offer as an artist.’ I wouldn’t include Bratfisch in that category because that was different and I really loved doing that character. So that was another reason for wanting to move on. One ballet I always really wanted to dance, even though I realise I wouldn’t have been ideally cast, is Balanchine’s Apollo. It’s my favourite ballet of all time and I would have loved the opportunity to play Apollo. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I also wanted to play The Chosen One in Kenneth’s Rite of Spring but that didn’t come into the rep while I was in the Company. I remember saying to Anthony Dowell in one end of year meeting that I really wanted to play Carabosse, a role that he had created in the new Sleeping Beauty that was put on in 1996 but he wouldn’t let me do it. AP: How did Peter and the Wolf come about? Peter and the Wolf has six or seven Principals but, as you know, the Royal Ballet School has got hundreds of children and I felt I had to find a way of getting all the kids on so I devised this idea that the set would be the children – the meadow would be played by the older girls, the pond would be played by the younger girls, etc. The only thing we had was this great tree stump in the middle with a load of graffiti all over it. At the time Ian Spurling worked as a dresser backstage at the Opera House – his nickname was Auntie! He was also a fantastic designer but we all just knew him as Auntie. When Peter and the Wolf came up, I needed to find a designer that could do me designs on the cheap because Merle had no money. I found my contract for doing Peter and the Wolf – I got £400 and that included my fares to White Lodge so there wasn’t much left! So I had to find someone to do the costumes and Ian was a totally inspired choice. I said to him that I wanted these kind of ‘show girl’ meadows and ‘flapper’ pond girls that looked like they were from the 1920’s and he came up with these fantastic costumes. Then I got going with the choreography and I like putting humour into ballets. Then, of course, it was so cute with the kids but what I was asking them to do was quite grown-up as well. But about half way through, I do remember getting choreographer’s block – I got stuck on the Cat. Rosalyn Whitten, who used to be a dancer at the Royal Ballet, would always come and help me at rehearsals. It was great having her by my side. It’s great having an assistant because it can be a very lonely business and you can feel isolated, so it was good to have Ros helping me with those early ballets. AP: Looking back at your time with the Royal Ballet, both as a dancer and a choreographer, what was your proudest moment? Getting Dances with Death on to that stage was also a proud moment because the four weeks I had to do it in had been hell and the Company’s response to me while I was doing it hadn’t been great. So getting that on stage was a proud and emotional moment. It was something that I really wanted to express and was very important to me. Some people had their doubts about it and I now look back at the video of it I know it wasn’t one of the best ballets but I am proud of myself for attempting something of that magnitude, at that age on the Opera House stage. AP: In 1996 you decided to leave the Royal Ballet and moved to Rambert – but that company made it clear that it couldn’t support your work as a choreographer. MH: Rambert wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to go to Nederlands Dans Theater. During the Royal Ballet’s mid-season break in the Spring of 1996 I took myself off to Europe and I auditioned for Maurice Béjart and Jiří Kylián but I didn’t get jobs with either of them which I was really sad about. So Rambert was my third choice and it took a while to get into the Company because Christopher Bruce didn’t have any places but eventually he offered me a place in January 1997. He was very clear in my interview. He was not employing me as a choreographer – he was employing me as a dancer. To be honest at the time I was more than happy with that idea. I had had a really bad time putting on Dances with Death at the Royal Ballet in 1996 and I had also had a bad experience with English National Ballet putting on Blitz which sadly never made it to the stage. It was a ballet I thought was really great but it was jinxed. Choreographically, I had had a bad year and I wasn’t enjoying it much and it was alienating me out from everybody. I just wanted to be part of a group again. I wanted to be accepted and enjoy what I did – not just on stage – but by day, with my friends. I thought leaving the Royal Ballet and starting with a clean slate somewhere else would be a really good idea. I loved Rambert’s repertoire and I knew it would be suited to me as a dancer so I was quite happy with Christopher’s decision to hire me as a dancer not as a choreographer. A year went by and I realised I missed being creative and choreographing. There was a choreographic workshop in my first year at Rambert but I opted out of doing it. It had been naive of me to think that there wouldn’t be people at Rambert who knew people at the Royal Ballet. The dance world is small and gossip travels fast and for some reason I didn’t seem to have a good reputation! It really perplexed me and I couldn’t understand what the problem was! When I started at Rambert, some people were great and they were very welcoming and I had some lovely friends at Rambert, but there was a group there – people who hadn’t been at the Royal Ballet but who maybe had wanted to be there – who gave me a really hard time at Rambert and made my life very difficult. It’s kind of a pattern in my life! I’ve had lots of wonderful things in my life but I have paid a price for it as well. I very quickly got unhappy at Rambert. As choreographers we are totally self-obsessed by our own work and what we want to do. All the choreographers I know are the same – we are all terribly insecure about our own worth. Christopher gave me some great things to do at Rambert and I am very grateful to him for that but I left after four years. I had got out of the choreographic loop although I was doing little projects but one is very quickly forgotten. By the time I left Rambert, I was physically exhausted, depressed and wanted to stop dancing. I actually stopped dancing for a year – which was crazy because I absolutely love dancing. Rambert was a hard company to be in. We were touring all over the UK and I was often in three pieces a night - it was absolutely exhausting. Also I had got very down in my self-confidence about being a choreographer so when I left Rambert, I wondered what I was going to do. I was exhausted as a dancer and had lost confidence as a choreographer so I took a year out. AP: A commitment you had made years earlier then came back to haunt you, in the form of Mulan for the Hong Kong Ballet. MH: Stephen Jefferies, a principal at the Royal Ballet, and his wife who had worked at the Royal Ballet School had always both been very supportive of me as a choreographer. They said that they would love for me to go and do something for them at the Hong Kong Ballet when they both left to go and work there. So I had agreed some years beforehand to go and do a three-act ballet for Hong Kong Ballet. I had already done Cinderella for London City Ballet in 1995. That had been a tough job as it had been done in five weeks, however, it was already set, the score was there and I knew the storyline and I had great inspiration from the Ashton and Nureyev productions. But Mulan was Stephen’s idea and it was a new ballet from scratch. The only knowledge I had of Mulan was the Disney film so I did a lot of research. Stephen sent me videos of a Chinese opera company doing it – it was bizarre with lots of funny mannerisms and gestures. I also took a lot of inspiration from the Disney movie as there was a lot of fun in it which I wanted to incorporate into my version. But bearing in mind I had just left Rambert, had a breakdown and had lost my confidence as a choreographer, the prospect of doing a three-act ballet on the other side of the world was scary. But one thing that my mum and dad taught me was to pick myself up and just keep on going so I did manage to write a scenario and create a ballet scene by scene. The company found me a composer in China who composed the music while I was creating the ballet – I only had Act One when I started the ballet. I had two Chinese designers who didn’t speak English – that was a nightmare – I had to have a translator. Also, they were very stuck in their ways about what they thought Mulan should be. I was trying to be respectful to Chinese tradition because there is a religious context in that story – but I also had these new ideas about what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to make it a bit more light and interesting for a younger audience. Although the designers were stuck in their ways, we did finally collaborate and they did a really beautiful job - the set and costumes were stunning. I hate to moan and make it sound sad but it was really hard. I was on my own for three months in Hong Kong, staying in the YMCA and Stephen Jefferies and his wife were the only two friends that I had there - but they lived in their wonderful apartment on Hong Kong Island and I was in the YMCA! It was a very lonely existence. Every evening I would go back to my room and plan the next day’s rehearsal and write notes and go through the video material I had filmed each day. But I did it – I put it on and I think it was a success. However, when I got back from Hong Kong I thought ‘I know I love choreographing and I know I love dancing’ but both seemed so very different from how I perceived them to be when I was 16. AP: In 2001 you accepted an invitation to join George Piper Dances. MH: This is the time when all the skeletons in the closet start coming out! Michael and Billy hadn’t been my biggest supporters at the Royal Ballet. They had been quite harsh on me and they teased me. I can smile about it now but it wasn’t very nice at the time when I had just joined the Royal Ballet and I had these two older guys who weren’t very nice to me. So when they asked me to join George Piper Dances as a founder member I felt this was a time for me to revisit the skeletons in my closet and the relationships which had really damaged me, in that they made me feel unloved and unaccepted. I thought this would be a really good opportunity for me to go and work for them, when they had worked for me when I was at the Royal Ballet. They hadn’t liked that very much – some little 21 year old telling them what to do. I thought how funny it was that life had come around and now the situation was reversed. I thought this was bound to be a good thing – and I wasn’t going to be as difficult as they were! The first year at George Piper Dances was great and it really saved me, after I had given up dancing for a year. I can’t remember who the reviewer was but someone reviewed the opening performance of George Piper Dances at the Roundhouse and they said I looked like someone who had been let out of cage! I was so pleased to be out on stage and dancing again. That first year with Mike and Billy was great. We toured the UK as they tried to establish their new company. In the second year it was still OK. They commissioned me to do a piece for the company but I very quickly realised George Piper Dances was all about Mike and Billy. I think it’s great what they have done. I still support their company and go and watch what they do now and I think they have really carved out a niche for themselves in the dance world. However, at the time I felt like a bit of an extra part – and there was no way Matthew was going to be an extra part because he felt he was more important than that! So after two years with Mike and Billy, I made the decision to move on. But I was grateful to them for those two years of employment. At that point I moved into my freelance career – which is where I am at now. AP: Then Will Tuckett invited you to be Toad in Wind in the Willows. MH: There’s another skeleton - William Tuckett had also been harsh to me! We had both been young, fledgling choreographers at the Royal Ballet. Will had done a lot of work for Birmingham Royal Ballet, then Anthony had brought him over to the Royal Ballet, then along came Matthew. I got a lot of the attention. I seemed to get all these fabulous reviews when I was first at the Royal Ballet - so I don’t think he liked me very much! I wasn’t Will’s first choice for Toad. Sarah Wildor was first choice for Toad, which I know sounds bizarre but that was his choice. But she declined, though illness I think, so he was stuck without a Toad and I think it was Adam Cooper who suggested me to him. I had done a show with Adam earlier in the year – the Exeter Festival. So Will called me up and I was absolutely shocked to hear him on the other end of the line. I wondered what he wanted after all this time! He offered me Toad in Wind in the Willows and again it was wonderful how things had come full circle again. I have a lot to thank Will for because over the last few years we’ve done Wind in the Willows, The Soldier’s Tale and Pinocchio and he’s given me the opportunity to create some of the most fulfilling roles I have ever danced in my career. The creative process was very collaborative. Wind in the Willows was a real turning point for me in that it made me feel my career was really back on track. When I look back I now wonder why I let so many things bother me as a younger person. Why did it upset me so much? But when you are young, you are very vulnerable and I just wanted to be liked by everybody. That was naive of me because you can’t be liked by everybody – that’s just not the way the world works. AP: 2004 saw you becoming a song and dance man. MH: Another ‘full circle’. When I left Arts Educational School I was destined for a career in the theatre. However, I auditioned at the Royal Ballet School and was offered a place so I thought ‘I’ll go there – it’s a good thing to have on my CV’. But I hadn’t planned to stay more than two years at the Royal Ballet School. I had been a bit of a snob around musical theatre and during my dance career I thought it was probably a good thing that I hadn’t entered musical theatre. I’d danced in the Royal Ballet, Rambert and George Piper Dances and I considered that to be an elite dancer’s career so I looked a little down my nose at musical theatre – but it actually suits me down to the ground. I’ve always loved singing and I love being funny and I love acting. With inspiration from Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, it was inevitable that I would go into musical theatre. But I don’t just want to be a ‘musical theatre lovie’ – I’ve just been given the opportunity to dabble – for example with Adam Cooper in On Your Toes then doing the Chichester Festival last year with Babes in Arms. What I like about my freelance career is that I can get my toes into lots of different areas whether that be television, film, musical theatre, contemporary dance, ballet, etc. I don’t like to be in one place for too long. AP: In 2006 you were in a couple of films – Mrs Henderson Presents and Riot at the Rite. MH: My agent put me up for Mrs Henderson Presents. It was a fun job and a funny route getting it. I went up for the part Will Young plays. Initially, they were looking for an actor who could sing and dance and they hadn’t found one. Then they decided to look for a dancer who could sing and act and I was interviewed for that. Everything was going very well and I was called back to do a second interview and that seemed to go very well and I felt I might have it in the bag. But then I was called back for a third interview and they said they had suddenly changed their ideas and that they wanted to split the part of Bertie – instead of him being the dancer, singer and actor, they wanted to have a separate choreographer and keep the part of Bertie as a separate acting and singing role. I didn’t realise at the time that they had found Will Young. That was totally understandable because he was a pop star and totally suited the role. So I lost out to Will but they were very kind in the sense that they really wanted me on board so they split that role in half to keep me in the movie. It was a shame, I had some great numbers in the movie but they were all cut but I do have them on DVD - the director gave them to me for my show-reel. I loved doing that film particularly because I love that 1930s period. It was also interesting because it was my first film – it wasn’t like being on stage. You do your scenes over and over again and there is absolutely no atmosphere or sense of theatre about what you are doing. It’s quite dead and quite cold and really tiring because you are just hanging around from the early hours of the morning to the late hours of the night on set in your dressing room waiting to be called. So it was totally different to be a live performer on the theatre stage. The other film was Riot at the Rite. Nijinsky was a huge inspiration to me in my teens and I had always wanted to play him on stage in a live production or in a film so when I heard they were making this film I thought I might have a chance but I found out that they had already cast that role. Adam Garcia, who played Nijinsky in the film, had this scene where he had to wear tights but Adam had never worn a jock strap/dance belt before so I had to help him! He tucked everything between his legs and I said to him ‘No, you don’t wear it like that. Sorry to be crude but you have to ‘lift and separate’ and bring it all up the front!’ I was so glad to be able to tell him that before he did his scenes otherwise it would have looked like Nijinsky didn’t have anything! So my role, besides being Adam Garcia’s jock strap assistant, was playing a dancer in the company who was not happy with Nijinsky’s choreography and didn’t support him. Funnily enough, it kind of mirrored my own career – the way everybody hated Nijinsky and made his life hell while he was trying to create the Rite of Spring for the Ballet Russe and there was I as one of the dancers making his life hell. So I was playing out the reverse of what had happened to me so I knew what it must have felt like for Nijinsky and what it was like to be abused by your dancers - but I got to play the abuser which was quite fun actually! AP: We have been joined this evening by the Friends of New Adventures who will have seen you most recently as the Prince in Swan Lake. MH: Matthew Bourne and I had had a funny old relationship. I remember bumping into him at Angel tube station years ago and he had seen me in Rambert doing Ghost Dancers and he said he thought it was fantastic and that he would love to work with me. That was just one of the first of Matthew’s dangling carrots! There have been many, many since then. For years and years, we would meet either socially or at a dance event and each time he would say “We must do something together” but nothing ever happened and in the end I kind of wrote it off. Originally I think Matthew was going to create Edward Scissorhands on Will Kemp but that didn’t happen and I said to Matthew ‘If you don’t use Will, I would be quite happy to be second in the queue.’ But that didn’t happen. I was also really interested in The Car Man but that didn’t happen either. So I was surprised when I got an email from him saying that he wanted me to play the Prince in SwanLake. I had done one thing with George Piper Dances which was a bit out of Matthew’s Town and Country which Matthew and Scott (Ambler) had once done, that was just a few minutes and a revival of something he had done. So when the offer of SwanLake came through, I thought ‘Thank God – here’s something he wants me to do and I’m available for’. The other thing that was great was that he gave me the choice of either doing a long run or a short run. As I mentioned before, I don’t like committing to things for a long time so the short run appealed to me greatly – just Paris and London. As a young dancer I had always wanted to do SwanLake but had always wanted to dance the Swan but I think the right choice was made in casting me as the Prince. It suited me in many ways as a dancer actor but I still feel I would have been an interesting Swan - albeit a small one! It was great finally to do that show and to work with Matthew. In my Good Luck card he did say “and we must do something together again” I’m still waiting Matthew! AP: Following Swan Lake and Babes in Arms you joined Darcey Bussell and Katherine Jenkins on the Viva la Diva tour. MH: It was nice to work with Darcey. She’s not one of the skeletons in my closet because she was always very nice and friendly to me – very down to earth. So when I got the phone call from her for Viva it sounded great. But I did feel that I was a little misled because they said I was going to be a featured artist in the show and I ended up being glorified ensemble – which my ego found a little difficult to take! It was a fun show and we did some good things – Darcey did a version of the Red Shoes because Moira Shearer was one of her inspirations and I got to play the Massine part of the shoemaker. I also got to sing my song which had been cut from Mrs Henderson Presents. I had sung that at my audition for Viva la Diva and the Director had like it so much he wanted to put it in the show. So those were my two favourite moments in Viva la Diva. I was meant to be doing it again this year but I decided at Christmas that once was enough for me but it was nice to see Darcey and Jonathan Cope again. Just a couple of weeks ago I was offered at job at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre for the summer as an actor - Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Doing Shakespeare will be a whole new experience – it’ll be like an apprenticeship in classical acting and I’m hoping to learn a lot. A member asked if Matthew had worked with Leslie Edwards. MH: He was a great guy – one of the longest-serving in the Royal Ballet. He had lots of great stories but so often I wished he would have gone further with his stories about Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. I wanted to know all the gritty detail but he would never spill the beans! A member asked what Matthew had done in his year off. MH: I didn’t stop dancing completely. I did one or two classes a week with a friend of mine who is a ballet teacher and I kept myself in shape. Ultimately I still wanted to dance but wanted to get away from the limelight for a bit. I also did a couple of low key projects with some friends and I went to therapy as well, which was a great help on an emotional level. Through my choreographic work I had managed to save a bit of money so I could afford to take a year out – but the money soon went! A member commended Matthew on his performance in The Soldier’s Tale. MH: The Soldier’s Tale is probably my favourite thing I have done. It allowed me to express a lot of pent up anger, frustration and aggression and all those nasty feelings that we all have but I wasn’t allowed to have as a child, or even as a young adult. I was always Nice Matthew who would never say anything bad. So it was great to get the opportunity to play a baddie, someone really nasty and vile. Will chose his cast very well and we were a great little team. There was only four of us in the cast. It was a wonderful working process – very intimate and, in a way, something that I had always craved as an artist – to feel that I was part of a little family. Adam Cooper, Will Kemp, Zenaida Yanowsky and Will Tuckett – we were like a little family for that creative process. It was very close to my heart and a very moving experience. So it was a shame we only did it for a week the first year and then again for a week in the second year. Lez Brotherston’s designs were great too. A member asked if Matthew had now given up choreography. MH: I have a funny old relationship with choreography. For me it’s like an addiction. If I do it in moderation it is fine but if I do it too much, it takes over. I am very compulsive and obsessive around choreography. When I was younger and doing it I was a workaholic. I was dancing all day and at night I was at home working on a new ballet. My life was my art. By the time I reached my late 20’s I realised I was a bit lonely and a bit sad. I wanted to chill out a bit and have a life. I choreographed a ballet last year for the London Studio Centre and it was great and fulfilled me hugely. I’m all confidence in one breath and all insecurity in the next – I think many choreographers are like that. I have to be careful I don’t become a workaholic again and keep a balanced life. Before that my life was extreme - like a rollercoaster ride. It was exciting but I think I missed out on a lot of things that a young person shouldn’t miss out on. I do want to carry on choreographing but I’m scared about the pressure that would be put on my shoulders and coping with people’s expectations – but I have to get out there and do it. I’m not quite sure where my career is heading – I tend to let fate and chance steer the way. There are so many other things I want to do too. I have always loved painting and designing. I love architecture and archaeology. I am also coming to a difficult time in a dancer’s career. That’s not to say it’s coming to an end but it is never going to be what it once was. At 35 I can’t throw myself around like I used to and that is a painful time for any dancer. For me it has been such a huge passion – I lived to dance and it has been a huge part of my life. I’m dreading the day when I can’t dance any more. Becoming an actor and singer is enabling me to continue that affair with being a performer. But I am very open-minded to the idea that I might leave theatre behind totally and I might do something completely different. There is a part of me that would love to find another passion. AP: We started this evening with a quote from Martin Harvey and I am going to close with another quote, this time from Thomas Whitehead who partnered you in Swan Lake: “Matthew Hart was wonderful to work with – he is a real powerhouse. He is an amazing guy and an amazing professional.” (Ballet Association 6 Dec 07) Members wholeheartedly agreed with this appreciation, which was met with long and enthusiastic applause. Report written by |
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