A vintage Mear

Stephen Mear is looking like the cat who got the cream. After a successful, but not exactly starry, career as an honest pro chorus dancer, his choreographic work has catapulted him into the theatrical front rank.

In the six years since he hung up his dancing shoes for good, he's tucked two Olivier nominations under his boyish belt (for Soul Train and Singin' In The Rain) and has now been signed up by Sir Trevor Nunn for the National's eagerly anticipated revival of the Cole Porter classic, Anything Goes.

Finding virtue in versatility, Mear is the kind of trooper you could be forgiven for thinking they don't make any more. If he didn't quite dance his way out of the womb, then it was as near as dammit. He strapped his tap shoes on at the age of four in his mum's Loughborough dance class and never looked back.

One look at his CV tells you that Mear knows his showbiz ropes. Learning his craft at London Studio Centre, the prime breeding ground for the majority of modern West Enders, Mear went straight from dance school into 42nd Street, Evita and a clutch of other top musicals. From tap to jazz to disco, he's happy to turn his foot to anything - one of his early choreographic commissions was a BBC kids show called Megamaths. 'That's a nice little earner that; I still get repeat fees. My job was to make the numbers dance,' he smiles.

The last thing Mear actually danced in was Song And Dance six years ago, at the age of 32. 'The funny thing is I don't really miss it,' he muses. 'I've always wanted to choreograph so there was no great emotional wrench to switching sides. I was a good understudy - I was never going to be a leading man.' He's doing himself down there (I've seen worse) but you get his drift. Happiest hoofing it in the chorus line, Mear's keen sense of team spirit is ideally suited to the complex demands of staging big cast musicals.

There are 34 bodies to be whisked around the shipboard stage in Anything Goes, a Broadway standard that's been pretty ill-served by two indifferent Bing Crosby movie versions. A happy-go-lucky cruise through some of Porter's breeziest tunes, the timeless score includes I Get A Kick Out Of You, You're The Top and the magical title song.

'I love Busby Berkeley and I love creating patterns,' enthuses Mear. 'It's really important that, no matter where you're sitting in the theatre, you can get the picture of everything that's going on. We're using a 1987 version that was first staged in New York, but it's very true to the period. It's got a very 1930s feel - like watching an old film. You want to see characters dance and that's the exciting thing, because they're all shapes and sizes.'

But can you make a silk purse out of a sow's ear when you're dealing with actors rather than dancers? 'Actors can make great dancers,' he rebuffs. (Mear is typically full of praise for a cast which includes Sally Ann Triplett and John Barrowman). 'I teach them the steps and then we work out how to do it in character.'

Given such even-handedness, it's no wonder Mear is in such demand - straight after Anything Goes he's off to Amsterdam for a spectacular crack at The Three Musketeers - for in a world overflowing with temperamental luvvies, he takes a distinctly unegotistical approach to his work. 'I set the choreographic style and there are little trademark things that I always put in - I always include a conga line,' he admits. 'But it's a compliment to me if the audience leaves not quite knowing where the choreographer left off and the director began.

'I believe in old style showbiz,' he continues. 'I want people dancing in the streets when they come out of the theatre - if that happens, then I've achieved what I set out to do