Stephen Mear: Old-style master of the modern chorus line "I'm old-fashioned!" he confides blithely. I don't want to be spinning on my back. There are plenty of choreographers who can do that brilliantly. I love what I do. So, it would seem, do audiences love his lively, affectionate pastiches of great tap-and-toe styles delivered with a twist of lime and his own signature - scene changes melded into dance routines, chorus lines with interlocking arms. "I'm very arms," he says. Mear has been putting his own vision on stage since he gave up dancing 15 years ago. The spur for hanging up his pumps was an Olivier nomination for his first show, Soul Train. I think my body was tired. I'm not a choreographer that sits down. I will get up and dance. I still think I'm Peter Pan, but I'm 48. Your body can't take the toll. Other shows followed, but the big break was Singin" in the Rain at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which featured buckets of rain, not just in the title song but in its reprise for the finale. I said: 'Can we put our macs on and do a big finale? And funnily enough this last lot have done the same. That's as catty as the polite and smiley Mear will get: by "this last lot" he means the current West End revival, with a different choreographer. Mear was always destined for a life in dance. He grew up in Loughborough, where his mother was a dance teacher, and he inherited her ability. By the age of three he was tapping. I wasn't the brainiest kid in the class, put it that way. I was dyslexic, very badly. One way I could express myself was to dance and people noticed me. By his teens he was winning tap contests. While still a student at London Studio Centre he landed jobs in Evita and 42nd Street, but even with a matinee he made sure to do his two classes in the morning. He was soon appointed dance captain, the choreographer's ears and eyes in the ensemble, and then assistant to the likes of Norman Maen and Susan Stroman - he calls her "Stro" - and he jointly choreographed The Witches of Eastwick with A Chorus Line veteran Bob Avian. "He had so much coming out of his soul," recalls Avian, "and the steps were all there. His generosity rubbed off on me. We were never jealous of each other for a second. That's very rare. It's another of Mear's signatures that, when not working in the school of Busby Berkeley, with long-legged chorus lines clacking in unison, he can coax choreography into the most recalcitrant types. In ENO's On the Town, he was one of the first to get the opera chorus hoofing. They said: 'You'll never get the opera singers to move for you. They don't like dancing. I learnt everybody's names, got all their photos, and kind of won them over. Similarly, for Anything Goes he smuggled steps into the actors" morning warm-up "without them knowing, so that when we got to do the dance they didn't feel insecure. It was just a trick so they didn't feel out of their comfort zone. The charm lured out dance divas inside Julie Walters in Acorn Antiques and Sarah Lancashire in Betty Blue Eyes. Last summer, with She Loves Me in Chichester, where he is an associate, Mear directed for the first time. What took him so long? I only wanted to do shows I know backwards, that no one could catch me out on. I can't go in and bluff my way. There are some who do that and I think: 'How'd you do that?" " Not that he wants to do too much of it. Next year he's choreographing The Pajama Game with Richard Eyre, and another as-yet- unannounced, but huge, musical. I'm scared of directors not using me. I don't want them to think I can do their job better than they can. Touch wood, I don't have to work with idiots that aren't collaborative. I wouldn't last two minutes. I've worked with directors I think I'm better than, and then you work with Richard and Trevor and think: 'I'm nowhere near as good as them - I can't ever put myself into that bracket." " Kiss Me, Kate" is at the Old Vic, London SE1 (0844 871 7628), until March 2, 2013