Signing a full-time professional contract at the age of 17 (back in 1977) Matthew Hawkins had already trained for ten years. As a child, his dancing was intuitively driven - twinned with a youthful sense of adventure and discovery. Intellectual dimensions would bring their sustenance somewhat later. His continued desire to share the assets of his dance knowledge stem from a prolonged delight in dance activity, heightened by key moments of seminal experience. At the same time as he began to get serious about dancing, Matthew was also singing his heart out in a local choir. When he joined the Royal Ballet School at age 10, he could already read music and somehow he had also begun to learn the syllabus of adult ballet exams via evening classes at the Royal Academy of Dancing. His tutors expressed concern that he was a prodigy who might get bored. They need not have worried.
In his first years at the Royal Ballet School, Matthew 'walked on' as a pageboy in "Giselle" at Covent Garden and here his artistic education began. From his vantage point in the wings, or centrally seated in the house at stage rehearsals, he absorbed the underpinnings and the presentation of this classic dance-drama. He was fascinated to see how different principal players would repeat but reinterpret key scenes - the subtleties and nuances gripped him. The performances of Giselle were preceded by abstract 20th century masterworks (By Frederick Ashton and Jerome Robbins). Young Hawkins would observe these gems obliquely repeatedly and entirely. In the creation of Benjamin Britten's 1971 opera Death In Venice, Ashton choreographed the dances and Matthew had a small role as one of the children in the beach scenes. Despite being the work of masters, as played out on great stages, Death In Venice unsettled its audiences - its mixture of controversy, risk and theatrical knowhow was savoured, especially by juvenile players on the scene.
Meanwhile Matthew was being taught how to learn dancing; the RBS regimen was not strenuous and there was a strong focus on physical co-ordination, ease and clarity of movement. There was a sense that ballet should be something a person could live and grow with. A contrasting experience was offered via an exchange with the Paris Opera School, where Matthew enjoyed the exposure to a more intense and pressurised training environment. A move to the Royal Ballet's Upper school comprised a dramatic change of pace in a locale where professional exigencies were confronted.
Around the time of Hawkins' graduation, initiatives were begun in the UK dance community that focused on the possibility of fostering new generations of choreographers: for the first time on the dance scene, a creative choreographic act was thought 'learnable'. The International Course for Choreographers and Composers started its long run of summer schools and Matthew joined the pool of dancers for the second of these in 1976. This bracing episode opened Hawkins' eyes to new realities of experimentation and fostered a healthy grapple with critical discourse - such energies would engender changes later on.
