A legacy in dispute. (News).

England's Matthew Bourne came up with a winner when he created male swans for his version of Swan Lake in 1995. His company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, became immediately recognized worldwide and he received many honors, including a CBE from the Queen of England and three Tonys from Broadway. The company, which started life as a small-scale touring group constantly trying to make ends meet, had suddenly hit the big time. A Cinderella set in the London Blitz followed in 1999; then, in 2000, The Car Man brought additional acclaim for the company. Bourne was a hot item: He was asked to choreograph London theatrical revivals of My Fair Lady and South Pacific and was headhunted by Disney for the musical staging of The Little Mermaid, which is still in pre-production.

But while The Car Man was reaping applause, offstage rumors of a clash of business-versus-art opinions between Bourne and his executive producer, Katherine Dore spread through the dance community. Until then, they had been a successful theatrical partnership.

However, their visions of the future differed. "It was partly that things were getting too grand," Bourne told the Daily Telegraph last summer. "For me, the company was the performance company, the people I worked with. For Katherine, the company was the production company, the building up of the office, the commercial empire. What was being planned was a lot of productions happening at the same time, and I felt very uncomfortable ..."

Last fall, after fifteen years of copartnership, the two split. Dore set up her own management group and now holds the rights to the three big ballets, which she can stage without Bourne's consent (although he will still receive royalties). Should Bourne want to revise Swan Lake, as he says he plans to do for its tenth anniversary in 2005, he must obtain Dore's permission. So while AMP continues to tour the world without its originator and under Katharine Dore's wing, Bourne has founded a new company with many of his original dancers, aptly called New Adventures.

In August he showed them off in his latest work, Play Without Words (see Reviews, page 90), to much acclaim, and for three months this fall, the revival of his comical Nutcracker (created before the Dore partnership) has been running at the Sadler's Wells Theatre.

When the company is not working, Bourne will continue his musical-theater career, choreographing a version of the Tim Burton movie Edward Scissorhands for a London opening in 2003. Bourne says he still dreams of having his own fulltime company and not having to freelance. If all goes well with Disney's Mermaid and it proves as financially successful as The Lion King, perhaps this dream will come true.