New Adventures is the company most closely associated with Matthew Bourne’s hugely influential dance-theatre reimaginings of familiar stories. Emerging from Adventures in Motion Pictures and formalised under the New Adventures banner in 2002, the company has become a major force in British performance by creating works that are at once accessible, theatrical and choreographically distinctive. Its productions often begin with recognisable titles or cultural references, but they rarely settle for illustration. Instead, the company reshapes them through movement, atmosphere and character to produce dance theatre that feels both popular and formally assured.
The company is famous for landmark productions including Swan Lake, Cinderella, Nutcracker!, The Car Man, Edward Scissorhands and Sleeping Beauty. What links these works is not a single movement vocabulary so much as a storytelling instinct: Bourne’s choreography and dramaturgy place narrative, emotional clarity and theatrical image at the centre. That has allowed New Adventures to attract broad audiences without diluting artistic ambition. Touring has always been crucial to its identity, and the company has built a substantial public far beyond metropolitan specialist circles. Alongside performance, it invests significantly in talent development, participation and pathways for emerging artists, reinforcing the idea that the company is a creative ecosystem, not just a touring brand.
For Plie, New Adventures matters because it has changed expectations around what dance-led storytelling can achieve in mainstream theatre. It stands at an unusual intersection of ballet lineage, musicality, contemporary theatrical sensibility and audience reach. Few UK companies have done more to convince general audiences that dance can carry character, humour, menace and narrative sweep on the largest stages. Its influence on taste, commissioning and dance literacy in Britain is hard to overstate.