Daily Inspiration Quote by Matthew Bourne

Bourne is doing two things at once here: staking a claim and managing expectations. Calling it "one of my strongest dance pieces" is a quiet flex, but it is also a signal to audiences and critics who might have followed him into more theatrical territory and wondered if the choreographer had drifted from his core craft. The parenthetical about Play Without Words "veering away from a lot of dance" functions like a pre-emptive footnote: yes, that detour was intentional, and no, it wasnt a retreat.

The subtext is about calibration. Bourne built a career precisely by blurring categories - ballet remixed with musical theatre, narrative with pop immediacy, high technique with storytelling you can read from the cheap seats. When he says he wanted to go back to "almost the most dance I'd done", he's framing dance not as background decoration but as the primary engine: virtuosity, physical density, bodies speaking in full sentences rather than illustrating a plot.

Context matters because Bourne's brand is accessibility without apology. In a field where abstraction can become a gatekeeping device, he treats "more dance" as a kind of generosity: give the audience the visceral rush, the kinetic argument, the pleasure of movement doing the heavy lifting. The line also hints at an artist guarding against pigeonholing. If one project proved he could strip dance back, the next proves he can flood the stage with it - not to reassure purists, but to remind everyone that range is the point.