Bourne's AMP Returns with Car Man Ballet

The world premiere of the multi award-winning Adventures in Motion Pictures' latest revisionist ballet, its first new show in three years, opens this spring in Plymouth prior to a ten-date UK tour and a West End run this autumn. The Car Man, based on Georges Bizet's famous opera Carmen, opens at Plymouth's Theatre Royal on 16 May 2000 and continues to Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, High Wycombe, Salford, Woking, Eastbourne, Milton Keynes and Norwich before transferring to the West End's Old Vic on 13 September 2000.

Featuring new orchestrations of Bizet's score, The Car Man takes its inspiration as much from classic Hollywood noir films as from operatic convention. Updated and set in a vehicle body shop rather than a cigarette factory, the 'erotic thriller' shows how the dreams and passions of a small town, when fuelled by heat and desire, are catapulted into a spiral of opportunism, sex and murder.

Established ten years ago, Adventures in Motion Pictures, under the direction of artistic director and choreographer Matthew Bourne and producer Katharine Dore, has achieved international acclaim with its irreverent takes on artistic icons. The company's landmark 1995 production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, featuring an ensemble of male swans, collected eight UK awards, including an Olivier for Best New Dance Production, and 20 US awards, including three Tonys. The production returned to the West End this year for a sell-out, five week run at the Dominion Theatre. AMP's last production, Cinderella, based on Prokofieff's original score, premiered at the West End's Piccadilly Theatre in 1997. It won the 1998 Olivier for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for Lez Brotherston's set and costume design.

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