Translation and Dance. The Case of Matthew Bourne

Abstract

This chapter takes Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man as an example of today’s enlarged definition of translation, following the new approaches to contemporary translation. Taking this expanded way of seeing translation, I will analyze many of his choreographies as performances of previous lit­er­ary and operatic works. He translates through embodied performances, through bodies, understood here as semiotic systems that transmit meaning. Bourne’s ballets translate the classics through dance. He uses bodies to re­trans­late in order to update old meanings. The second part of the chapter will concentrate on how Matthew Bourne’s ballets offer an up-to-date ver­sion of Bizet’s world, of Cinderella and other. Using the body, he retranslates by performing the classics through movement and music: he deconstructs gen­res and genders by subverting opera and dance, but also straight and gay binary oppositions, thus creating richer and more ambiguous identities and characters.