Bourne's supremacy: exclusive: the outrageously entertaining choreographer who brought man-man love to Swan Lake talks about coming to America with his new Nutcracker!

Matthew Bourne snared American audiences nearly a decade ago with his radical Swan Lake, in which a chorus of steamy bare-torsoed swan hunks sent the prince into a fit of sexual hyperventilation. In December, Bourne brings his Nutcracker! to California (Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Orange County), while Mary Poppins, which he codirected with Cameron Mackintosh and choreographed, opens in London. In March his Play Without Words opens at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music, and he has plans for a new Edward Scissorhands next year. In a gay-press exclusive interview, Bourne talked to The Advocate about Sweetieland, gay hotlines, and Barbra Streisand.

A quote from The Daily Telegraph in London says that Nutcracker/has an "Absolutely Fabulous sense of girly satire." How much of a gay sensibility is there?

Quite a lot! It's often described as camp. The second half is very pink, very Hollywood. Yes, of course it's got a gay sensibility. The people who made it are very much of that persuasion! [Laughs] I gave it a central story about orphans trying to break out of the orphanage--in a sense, breaking out into the world of fantasy. Clara and the boy who leads the rebellion break out into the land of snow, where they do a Sonja Henie ice-skating dance--lots of fur-trimmed skirts. They go to the kingdom of the sweets: It's called Sweetieland; you are judged by how you taste rather than how you look. The waltz of the flowers is about all these people tasting each other--having a lick. It has sort of an underlying sexuality to it.

When you were a kid, what character did you want to be in The Nutcracker?

I didn't see The Nutcracker until I was 22. Julie Andrews was my idol when I was growing up. I used to kiss her picture on the cover of The Sound of Music album. I wanted to be the children in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I always wondered how you got those jobs.

With the new stage musical version of Mary Poppins, you seem to have figured it out.

[Laughs] That's right! I choreographed it and codirected it. It's not a version of the film--it's based more on the book--but it does use familiar songs along with the new ones. It's a lovely, lovely show. It's very much about the family and the bringing together of the family. It just opened in Bristol in England and opens in London in December. [If all goes well, it] will also be coming to the States. I hope to conquer the world with it after that.

In New York, Swan Lake was a huge artistic success with three Tony awards, but it wasn't a commercial success. Was there a lost opportunity to market it to a gay audience?

Yes, I think a lot of people spent a lot of time saying what it wasn't--"it's not a ballet," "it's not gay"--trying to please everyone. Cameron Mackintosh, the most famous person attached to it when we did it, was doing all these interviews saying, "I hate ballet. This isn't a ballet. It's a musical." The response from a lot of critics was "Dear Mr. Mackintosh, this is a ballet, actually. It's got no songs in it." In a sense, that worked against it. It needed people to say the opposite: "You might think this is ballet, but actually, if you love musicals or film, you'll probably love this show."

Your work has been called controversial. Is that something you like?

I don't like to shock people. And I'm often described that way: "the bad boy of ballet" or "the Damien Hirst [a British installation artist] of ballet." It's ridiculous, really. Because deep down I'm very audience-conscious and I try to make it work for everyone. A lot of people think you need prior knowledge when you come to see dance. It puts people off. For the vast majority of people, what I'm trying to do is tell a story where you don't need to know anything beforehand.

Play Without Words hits New York in March. Could you tell us about the piece?

Trevor Nunn, the [1997-2003 artistic] director of the National Theatre [in London], asked me to do something. I just said, "Why don't I try to do a play without words?" And he wrote down Play Without Words on his sheet of paper. That became the title. I was interested in a film called The Servant with Dirk Bogarde. It's about a young wealthy guy who buys a new house and hires a mansercant to look after him. It's about the servant's corruption of the master and the switching of roles. It's got an intense homoerotic feel about it--the servant-and-master relationship. I saw it when I was 13 and it excited me quite a lot. I knew exactly what was going on. It's one of those films where the conversation may be about one thing, but what they're actually doing physically--the way they're looking at each other--tells you something else. It's perfect for a nonverbal dance piece.

You were 22 years old when you started ballet. How difficult was that?

Coming to it late, I felt there was an advantage to being a dancer and choreographer, because I already had other interests. I had come out. I had lived a bit, had a lot of boyfriends. I had something to say, ideas about the work I was doing. I was really passionate about it.

Is it true you came out at 18 when you saw a gay hotline number on a record jacket?

It was [out '70s British punk rocker] Tom Robinson's single "Glad to Be Gay." The number was on the sleeve. I called it. They gave me the number of this gay teenage group. I phoned them up, and they said they met on Sundays on Holloway Road in north London, above a shop. I went there and walked up and down several times, not realizing that everyone was staring at me from above. As soon as I got up there I was pounced on. I became quickly that within a few weeks--peering out the window, [watching] who was walking up and down about to come in. It was such a wonderful experience at the time. I made lots of friends. At 18, I became one of the founding members of the gay club Heaven in 1978, where I used to run into Boy George and [fellow British drag star] Marilyn.

How long have you been with your partner, Arthur Pita?

We've been together eight years. We met during Swan Lake. He was a dancer in the show. He's choreographing now.

The celebrities love you, don't they?

That's why I love coming to L.A.! Barbra Streisand was the biggest surprise, in a way, because she was so nice to the company. The guys in the ensemble dressing room were excited because they knew she was coming, and they were playing Barbra in the dressing room, singing "Don't Rain on My Parade." They didn't know that Barbra had come backstage to use the ladies' room. While they were all singing, she opened the door, stuck her head in, and said "Hi, guys!" They were so shocked. She stayed behind at the end of the show and talked to the company for at least 45 minutes and then invited me over to her Malibu house.

Carman is the coauthor of Round About the Ballet, recently published by Limelight Editions.