An affectionate celebration of the genius of Shakespeare as some of the most celebrated names in the business reveal what it's really like to play the big Shakespearean roles
For 25 years, Matthew Bourne has been setting theatres and audiences around the world alight with his adaptations of some of the world's best-known and loved ballets and operas. From The Car Man - Bizet's Carmen, imaginatively reset as a dance piece in an American garage - to the dazzling, award-winning Swan Lake, he has a string of critically acclaimed hit shows that continue to tour worldwide. This modern, sexy and risque Christmas ballet film, conceived by Matthew Bourne, which combines projections, animation and an intimate shooting style to produce a distinctive new way of presenting dance on screen., conceived by Bourne, celebrates his power to imaginatively transform ballet, taking dance and dancers off the stage into the studio, bringing together projections, animation and an intimate shooting style to produce a distinctive new way of presenting dance on screen. Those who know Bourne's stage work can spot extracts from many of his biggest hits, but for audiences less familiar with his work this is simply a journey through a series of magical worlds where stories are told through dance.
Dream of Plenty Andrew Graham-Dixon shows how the art of Renaissance Flanders evolved from the craft of precious tapestries within the Duchy of Burgundy into a leading painting school in its own right. Starting his journey at the magnificent altarpiece of Ghent Cathedral, created by the Van Eyck brothers, Andrew explains their groundbreaking innovation in oil painting and marvels at how the colours they obtained can still remain so vibrant today. Andrew describes how, in the early Renaissance, the most urgent preoccupation was not the advancement of learning, humanist or otherwise, but the Last Judgment. People believed they were living in the end of days, a subject popular with preachers and artists and intensely realised in swarming microscopic detail by Hieronymus Bosch.
Andrew Graham-Dixon looks at how the seemingly peaceful countries of Holland and Belgium - famous for their tulips and windmills, mussels and chips - were in fact forged in a crucible of conflict and division. He examines how a period of economic boom driven for the first time by a burgeoning and secular middle class led to the Dutch golden age of the 17th century, creating not only the concept of oil painting itself, but the master painters Rembrandt and Vermeer combining art and commerce together as we would recognise it today.
Following a brief period of decline, the entrepreneurial and industrious region of the Low Countries rose again to become a cultural leader in the modern age. Despite its small and almost insignificant size it produced important forward-thinking artists like Van Gogh, Mondrian, Magritte and Delvaux, who changed the face of art forever. Andrew Graham Dixon's journey takes him to a remote beach in north west Holland that inspired Mondrian's transition to his now-renowned abstract grid paintings. Andrew digs deep into the psychology and social history of the region, exploring how the landscape of the past has informed the culture and identity of the Low Countries today and the impossibility of the Dutch drive to turn the philosophy of Mondrian's geometric order into a way of living.
Andrew Graham-Dixon pieces together the spectacular recent discoveries of ancient art that are redefining China's understanding of its origins. He comes face to face with an extraordinary collection of sophisticated alien-like bronze masks created nearly four millennia ago and travels to the Yellow River to explore the tomb of a warrior empress where he discovers the origins of calligraphy. Always seeking to understand art in its historical context, Andrew visits the tomb of the first emperor and comes face to face with the Terracotta Army. He ends his journey in western China, looking at the impact of the arrival of Buddhism from India on the wondrous paintings and sculptures of the Dunhuang caves.
Andrew Graham-Dixon travels to the Yellow mountains in southern China to understand the power of Chinese landscape painting. The period from the 10th to the 15th century - from the Song to the Ming dynasties - was the golden age of art in China. Andrew discovers an emperor so in love with art and beauty that he neglected to rule his country and scholar artists who fled the Mongol invasion to immerse themselves in nature, combining wondrous landscape painting and calligraphy. While Europe was still in the Dark Ages, Chinese art was being reborn.
Andrew Graham-Dixon charts the journey from imperial to modern - the glorious rise and calamitous fall of China's last dynasty. Rulers were so entranced by the spell of western art that they failed to notice the rise of western dominance, with disastrous consequences. The subsequent profound identity crisis saw China's artists struggle with outside influence. It was an age of crisis, which ultimately led to bloody revolution and rebirth. After tyrant Mao's Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square, does its new art reveal a different side to the modern China we think we know?
