Dance Art

Michael Clark: V&A Dundee exhibition to celebrate ‘one of Scotland’s most remarkable creative minds’

Now the Aberdeen-born dancer and choreographer Michael Clark is established to be celebrated like in no way just before in his property place, with the initially exhibition devoted to his trailblazing job.

Approximately 40 decades following launching his personal corporation, V&A Dundee will be enjoying host to the retrospective bringing collectively his largest influences, critical collaborations and most memorable performances.

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Movie footage, sculptures. paintings, costumes and pictures will all element in the 6-month exhibition Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, which will open on March 5.

Michael Clark in a publicity photograph from 1986. Picture: Richard Haughton

V&A Dundee states the clearly show, which follows the museum’s vastly well known celebration of nightclubbing, will give a special perception into a male it describes as “one of Scotland’s most extraordinary artistic minds”.

The exhibition will explore how Clark, a classically-skilled ballet dancer, has drawn inspiration from distinctive forms of society in his function and opened up the planet of dance to new audiences given that his swift rise to prominence in the 1980s.

Seriously affected by the likes of David Bowie, Patti Smith and T.Rex, Clark has worked with musical acts this kind of as The Tumble, Jarvis Cocker and Scritti Politti, the artists Sarah Lucas, Leigh Bowery and Peter Doig, the vogue designers Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, and the filmmakers Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman.

Born in 1962, Clark started Scottish classic dance lessons when he was 4, won a place at the Royal Ballet Faculty in London when he was 13 and formed his personal dance company at the age of 22 in 1984, by which time he experienced created 16 unique dance pieces.

Michael Clark in the course of the filming of Charles Atlas’s 1986 film ‘Hail the New Puritan.’ Photograph: Richard Haughton

The V&A Dundee exhibition is an up-to-date edition of a display released at the Barbican arts centre in London two yrs in the past.

The show, tickets for which have just gone on sale, is billed as “an amazing mix of punk, ballet and common lifestyle, celebrating a legitimate Scottish radical who has produced a revolution in dance”.

Sophie McKinlay, director of programme at V&A Dundee, stated: “It is a massively fascinating minute to provide an exhibition about a person of Scotland’s most daring and rebellious artistic minds house to V&A Dundee.

“Michael Clark brought together a neighborhood of collaborators throughout artwork, dance, design and style, style, audio and photography to produce performances that have forever adjusted how folks look at up to date dance.

Michael Clark in a 1984 publicity photograph. Image: Richard Haughton

“Clark is a true radical, a technically excellent dancer and choreographer as perfectly as a provocative artist whose operate has challenged and shocked society’s anticipations of gender and sexuality from the 1980s correct up to the present working day.

“His work with non-professional dancers, which include at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom, only underlines his full determination to opening dance up to everybody.”

Curator Florence Ostende mentioned: “Clark is fascinating as a pioneer who brought together diverse disciplines to fully modify modern day dance and the British cultural landscape, from embracing and celebrating queer culture in the 1980s by way of to redefining gender representation and stereotypes within the heteronormative tradition of ballet background.

“This exhibition, a person of the greatest surveys at any time committed to a residing choreographer, offers a comprehensive tale of Clark’s vocation.”

Michael Clark collaborated with the indie-rock band The Drop on his 1988 exhibit I am Curious, Orange. Photograph: Richard Haughton
Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole carrying out in Before and Soon after The Tumble, Michael Clark’s collaboration with the artist Sarah Lucas. Photograph: Andrea Stappert
Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark dressed in a t-shirt and tutu at the launch of Derek Jarman’s book ‘Dancing Ledge in London in the 1980s. Picture: Steve Pyke
Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark. Picture: Jake Walters

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