Michael Clark Company

John Neumeier, you need to be brave again: Michael Clark is back and demonstrating how cool ballet can be when viewed from the perspective of pop.

What David Bowie was to pop music, Scottish choreographer Michael Clark is to dance: an iconic, dazzlingly sexy stylist whose wild life culminated in glamorous art. Clark began his training in the Royal Ballet School, then developed a dance style blending ballet and punk together with figures from London’s ‘80s underground scene. His dancers performed to music like The Fall in costumes by Bodymap and Leigh Bowery and under the spotlight of video artist Charles Atlas. Clark combined pointed ballet figures with runway grandeur and contrasted stringent contrapuntal body rotations with stylized poses from everyday life: Dance with the spirit of pop culture that attracted a brand new audience and overshadowed conventional ballet. After Clark took some time off, he has now reconnected with the brilliance of his early works. He is opening the Summer Festival for the second time – the last time was 2014 – and showing a new work that opens in elegantly beautiful fashion to Erik Satie’s »Ogives« before building a powerful energy to Patti Smith’s song »Land« (from which also the piece’s title comes from) and ultimately flowing into a triumphant homage to David Bowie.

Evening Sheet (PDF) available for download here.