What more is there to say?

I don’t mind the big questions, and I rather like debates. However, I must admit to some puzzlement over recent discussions regarding “Play Without Words.” “Is it dance? Is it theater?” Has the title alone provoked this confusion? If it has, I should probably let everyone know that it’s all quite accidental.

When I first came up with the title, it wasn’t even a title. It was a literal description I gave to Trevor Nunn, then-artistic director at the National Theatre in England. He came to me and said, “Can you contribute a dance piece to our upcoming experimental season? The only stipulations are that it be new and it be created for us.” I said, “Well, why don’t I try and do a play without words. Would that be interesting to you?” He wrote down, “Play Without Words.” It stuck. Later, I tried to change the title to “The Housewarming.” They told me I could use “The Housewarming” as a subtitle. “Can’t I have ‘Play Without Words’ as the subtitle?” I couldn’t. So, here we are.

I’ve never decided that it should be called a theater piece; I’ve never decided that it should be called a dance piece. My only hope was that it be called enjoyable. If cornered, I would say that it’s music-theater because it’s music-driven. The music is the text, so to speak, and that seems a very important element that’s lost in these arguments.

My first interests were theater and film, so it should come as no surprise that storytelling has driven all of my work. I blame Fred Astaire. His genius was a huge influence on me. What I took from Astaire was that the best dances don’t exist in a vacuum. He would find a way into a dance, often through a walk or just by picking up something handy, so that a hyper-natural situation would arise out of a natural one. The entry was casual and, more often than not, a story was told. Take the duets with Ginger Rogers: They weren’t begun in the spirit of, “Oh, now we do a dance.” They were forwarding the plot. They were about the relationship. They were scenes, really, and that style of functional, narrative choreography began to disappear in the years that followed.

Those days are long gone. Most of today’s choreographers don’t choose to tell stories directly. But isn’t that why we go to the theater and the cinema? Stories are at the heart of why people gather in rooms to watch things occur.

My form of theater is storytelling through movement. My work is very focused on the audience and how it experiences a piece. The average audience member is not preoccupied with labeling what he or she is watching; rather, they’re trying to decide whether or not they like it.

To my mind, dance is theater because the performers are communicating -- according to the dictates of their form -- with an audience. On the stage, everything’s theater, isn’t it? A well-made play, a splashy musical, a ballet or even -- to use an American example -- a presidential candidates debate. (If your Mr. Rove were eligible for awards in choreography, I dare say that

he’d give the rest of us a good run for the money.)

I entered into “Play Without Words” with the mind-set that I was not going to rely on dance. I was thinking, “How far can I go in the other direction? How little dance can I use to tell this story?” The company and I watched many films from the ‘50s and ‘60s and experimented with different modes of storytelling through movement. (And there was our “temporary” title again. Words -- we were literally playing without them.)

As a freelance choreographer I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the best directors: Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre and Sam Mendes, to name a few. I have observed what they do with actors and have brought those experiences back to my company, New Adventures. My dancers talk like actors now. Our notes are usually about that side of things rather than dance steps.

To further the theatricality of “Play Without Words,” multiple dancers appear on stage, simultaneously portraying aspects or thoughts of a single character. We compress time, showing a half-hour in five minutes by layering the beginning, the middle and end of a story. Where perspective is altered, perception follows. It becomes an all-encompassing observational experience.

I was recently thinking about Susan Stroman’s “Contact.” I’m an admirer of Stroman and of the piece, which is often brought up as another example of a dance-theater hybrid. “Contact” is more of a dance piece, I believe, because its situations and the stories it tells don’t require words. In addition, Stroman and the book writer John Weidman set up a scenario in which words were used when words were needed. In “Play Without Words,” we’ve tried to present situations in which people would speak, but don’t. To do that, I had to find a way to make the audience feel things are being said -- even though no words are spoken.

Operas and ballets require a written scenario in the program. Can you imagine walking into a new play or film, only to be offered a detailed synopsis of the plot? You’d probably say, “Thanks a whole lot. I don’t want to see the show now.” This is acceptable in ballet and opera because a person can’t follow it without a guide. My work is about breaking that barrier, it’s about saying, “Yes, you can follow this. When the curtain goes up I will tell you a story. You don’t have to do anything but sit down and engage with the piece.”

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‘Play Without Words’

When: Opens 8 p.m. Monday. Runs 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Call for exceptions.

Ends: May 29

Price: $30 to $85

Contact: (213) 628-2772, www.TaperAhmanson.com

Matthew Bourne is the Tony-winning director-choreographer of such works as “Swan Lake,” “Cinderella” and “The

Car Man.” He also co-directed and choreographed “Mary Poppins,” currently playing in London.