A ROW has erupted over an Arts Council decision to give more than £200,000 to Matthew Bourne, the choreographer, to perform his latest ballet to recorded music.

A 1986 Danish recording of Herman Lovenskiold’s 1836 score will be used instead of an orchestra when Highland Fling tours such venues as the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, and The Lowry, in Salford, Manchester.

The move was condemned yesterday by the Musicians’ Union. Horace Trubridge, its Assistant General Secretary, said that public money was being spent on a “ropy old recording”. He added: “The public want to hear music played live and it is astounding that the Arts Council should be so out of touch with public opinion.”

Bourne, who has just codirected the acclaimed Mary Poppins musical with Richard Eyre, specialises in satirising ballet classics. His Swan Lake, in which he famously cast men as the swans, won over audiences in the West End and on Broadway, winning awards and confirming him as a leading figure in dance today.

Highland Fling is a reworking of La Sylphide. It casts the protagonist, a peasant in the 19th-century Scottish Highlands, as an unemployed welder in 1990s Glasgow. Sixteen dancers begin a thirteen-week tour on February 14 in a new staging of a production that was first performed, to mixed reviews, in 1994.

Bourne was believed to be in South Africa yesterday and could not be contacted. One insider from his company said: “If there had been more funds, there would have been an orchestra. Swan Lake had about 30 musicians and Nutcracker about 35. Musicians are a significant extra expense for a tour.”

Mr Trubridge said: “It is lamentable that Matthew Bourne’s creativity does not extend to creating a new and imaginative version of the music required, instead of resorting to a dated Danish recording. Surely the public deserve better.”

He noted that Nutcracker had live musicians for only its Sadler’s Wells performances.

“Everybody else had to put up with a bloody recording,” he said. “It smacks of, ‘It’s all right for audiences outside of London to put up with a recording, but London audiences shouldn’t have to accept that’. But we’re all paying for the Arts Council’s funds.

“It doesn’t need a great deal of planning or creativity to produce Highland Fling with a dozen musicians. Opera Box (the touring company) does fantastic things with six or seven musicians. It would cost (Bourne) perhaps £500 a week for each musician.”

Sadler’s Wells confirmed yesterday that it will have live musicians when the Bourne staging takes place in March, although Mr Trubridge said: “They weren’t going to. It was only when we said that isn’t acceptable that they started having discussions.”

A spokesman for the Arts Council said that it encourages the use of live music wherever possible. “In this case, we’re happy with the way they’re proposing to go ahead,” he said. “It doesn’t create a great precedent. There were financial difficulties. Do we intervene in this one? No, we don’t.”

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