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cer, Michael Clark possesses a charisma, energy and grace that turn even a crowded stage into his own platform. He joined The Royal Ballet School at 13, leaving his home in Aberdeen, where he had studied Scottish dance since the age of four. My teacher was a Scottish celebrity, and it was always assumed that I would eventually take over his school, he recalls. I went to The Royal Ballet initially for a year to improve my posture for Scottish dancing. After three weeks I knew I wanted to stay. It was so glamorous . . . coming from Aberdeen. Now a glamorous creature himself, he is surprisingly tall for a ballet dancer, with closecropped hair and an androgynous face smooth skin, large hazel eyes and a sculpted mouth - like that of a child who has recently had his fingers in a jam jar. It is a disconcerting amalgam of innocence and knowingness. Singled out early on as a star, Michael Clark left The Royal Ballet to join the Rambert at 17. There he

swiftly became leading dancer performing in a number of specially created works by Richard Alston before leaving for an independent career. Alston, now director of the Rambert, has commissioned Swamp. They wanted it based on a smaller piece I did for my own company, Do You Me? I Did, says Clark. It was first performed in 1984 at the Riverside Studios, where Clark was Choreographer in Residence, It was the more accessible first half of a programme which also induded the now infamous New Puritans, in which Clark and Company tottered elegantly in Leigh Bowery’s glam rock costumes and platform boots and swallowed goldfish. Most people preferred the first half of the programme to the second so I decided to develop my work in the direction of the latter, The music for Swamp is by Bruce Gilbert, of The Wire, a band which escaped mass acclaim but is highly rated by punk aficionados, and Clark is pleased with the company’s response to the ballet. They are very open. There's a lot of confidence in me, and they trust me. Ot-

hers don’t, and that brings out the devil in me. More conventional companies often have a different aesthetic - I find I'm asked to work for the wrong reasons. Such as? For the attention I've been getting and the fact that I have a different kind of credibility. I think it's boring to feel that you have to carry on doing the same thing. I don't want to have to live up to expectations. I want to make new expectations. For this reason he is looking forward to performing at Sadler’s Wells at a time when he wonders whether ballet in general isn of a dead end. Everythine I have seen recently has left me cold. The next .month will be spent alone in a studio working out phrases and mo-, vements from an initial visual idea, before he confers on costumes and presentation - which are equally important - with cronies and collaborators such as Leigh Bowery Body Map's David Holah (also dancing) and musician Jeffrey Hinton. This group is a key element Tn Michael Clark’s work, as are the

mercurial demands of contemporary style. While Clark was launching an independent career, a band of young British designers, straight out of college, were being lauded by the New York and European fashion worlds. Everyone was talking about a new swinging London - a revisited 1960 s where the clubs and clothes and bands were thriving. The cat-walks were filled with gender-defying items men in the gauzy shirts of John Galliano, the witty hats of Stephen Jones and the unisex athletic designs of Bodymap, Michael Clark is one of the gang, He is leader of a pack which combines equal parts camp and pio : neer spirit, and his laid-back manner belies the overall control that he maintains over the proceedings. He remembers how, as a shild at school, he would gather together a couple of friends every term and put on a show for his teacher. I would write the credits up on the blackboard, and they would read, Costumes by Michael Clark, Performed by Michael Clark, Directed by Michael Clark. An egomaniac at eight, he says, with a gig-

gle. Michael Clark and Company no doubt satisfies this tendency. More than that, it enables him to work with elements which are often outside the limitations of existing companies. What I've done by having my own bunch is find a way to bring in what I see as necessary. I don’t regard what were .doing as. 'dance' or think that we can't have this or we won’t have that. I make sure it is satisfying for me by thinking that we are taking the form into new areas .. . and succeeding. Then he scoops up his leather coat and black kit bag and leaves to make a guest appearance at a friend’s show at the Riverside. □ The Times, June 1986, Alexandra Shulman

Showing some respect My goodness, Michael Clark is getting respectable in his old age! Now all of 24, his first season at Sadler's Wells coincides with the announcement of a Michael Clark Foundation intended to help talented young dancers and to provide much needed rehearsal studios for independent dance sompanies. It would be unfair to ascribe this to a new found seriousness, since he has always been entirely purposeful about his work. However, his latest creation, produced in association with Sadler’s Wells and premiered there last night, does find Clark showing a lot more respect toward his talent than he did a year ago.

In some ways No Fire Escape in Hell is a development of the boldly theatrical style he was then playing with, but he has ruthlessly cut out the less successful elements: the amateurish signing and most of the talking. There is still a good deal of the deliberate outrageousness, including simulated masturbation and fellatio, which has proved a canny selling point for his shows. Some of the jokes in fact are taking over direct from earlier productions, notably Clark’s own solo wearing a white frilly apron and a boastful sexual prosthesis which is snipped off with a pair of scissors. But he gets this aspect over in the first of the three short acts, which also provides quite a few jokes about policemen. Although they are treated as objects of mocking fun with a knockabout style of humour that might recall old silent pictures, their presence as representatives of higher authority, like the swags of black tulle that drape the foyer, is a hint of more serious things to

come. The middle act is largely given over to a lament for dead singers, John Lennon, Mama Cass, Judy Garland (I think) and others, performed to a collage by Jeffrey Hinton, during which the action often illustrates comically the quoted songs, although I am not quite sure what the dancers dressed as a fish and a lawn were doing, In this section Clark also reads a poem about his dead friend Trojan, which has to be accepted for its sincerity if not its quality. These two acts have some rock music specially written by Simon Rogers and Bruce Gilbert, and two numbers recorded by the group The Fall, to whose domineering songs Clark has been consistently faithful. He uses these rock rhythms, however, as.dancers in class use the musical accompaniment, entirely for strong beat, from which the choreography bounces like a man on a trampoline. In the final act, an even more powerful accompaniment, high in decibels, is provided live on stage

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