BOURNE'S `CAR MAN': BIZARRE BIZET.

"COMING SOON: very, very dirty dancing," proclaimed the British newspaper headline. It was certainly eye-catching, but not a topic that normally deserved further scrutiny. However, the subject of this dirty dancing was none other than Adventures in Motion Pictures, the two-time Tony Award-winning British dance company whose macho male birds in Swan Lake caught the imaginations of the international dance and nondance public alike. Its latest work, the first in three years, which premieres this spring, is titled The Car Man. Created by the founder and director of the company, Matthew Bourne, it is set to a new orchestration of Bizet's score for Carmen. However, This is no tale of Spanish toreadors, but "An Autoerotic Thriller, a tale of passion and revenge."

Inspired by Hollywood's classic black-and-white movies and New Wave European cinema, Bourne's scenario hints of the film script for The Postman Always Rings Twice. This ballet is set in a small-town community where dreams and passions are suddenly shattered by the arrival of a handsome stranger. The inhabitants, "fueled by heat and desire" (so the company's press release informs) "are drawn into a downward spiral of greed, opportunism, and even murder." So far, nothing that has not been depicted in ballets before--Sir Kenneth MacMillan's works have been shocking audiences for years.

So what about the headline? An interview in London's Daily Telegraph with Katherine Dore, the executive director of AMP, quoted her as saying that she wants to put live sex onstage in the West End and, if not allowed to by law, she wants to get as near as possible to it. The Car Man is going to be "very, very dirty." The titillating report certainly made its mark, its timing perfect--the Saturday before the company opened with a monthlong season of Swan Lake dubbed as "the last time you will be able to see this production in London--ever." And indeed, the demand for tickets has been as phenomenal as before. However, a spokesman for the company refuted the content of the newspaper interview, saying that British decency laws are very strict and forbid such scenes on stage, therefore the report was not to be taken seriously. However, he did concede that the article could be construed as a cleverly planned and timed publicity stunt.

AMP, which was founded thirteen years ago with a handful of dancers and a minibus as its office, has grown into one of Britain's largest companies with seventy dancers. Bourne, who at 5 years of age recreated Walt Disney's Cinderella for his friends, has restaged in his own inimitable style--plenty of humor and thought-provoking story lines--several classical ballets: The Nutcracker, a cross between Annie and a Busby Berkeley spectacular; La Sylphide, renamed Highland Fling and staged in a tenement squat in Glasgow; and Cinderella, set in the London Blitz of the Second World War. And there are promises of a further seven ballets in the next ten years that will include the reworking of Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, and Giselle.

The uniqueness of AMP, its reputation for quality, and its appeal to all ages will surely not be sacrificed with The Car Man, which sets off on a nationwide tour this spring before hitting London's theater world in the fall. By that time, all will have been revealed--or otherwise, if the British censors have their way.