Michael Clark Company

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Sun Oct 28, 2001 10:15 pm

Dance: No drugs, just fags and ouzo -- Michael Clark goes Greek By Luke Jennings in The Sunday Herald 'Try this,' says Michael Clark, and launches into a sequence which resolves itself into a crouching balance over one leg. His five female dancers flicker doubtful glances then try the sequence. It doesn't look quite the same. Clark smiles. 'We're all a bit knackered,' he murmurs. The piece Clark is rehearsing is called Rise. It has its Scottish premiere this week, when the brilliant, Aberdeenshire-born dancer/choreographer brings his company home.<A HREF="http://www.sundayherald.com/19571" TARGET=_blank>click for more</A>

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Mon Oct 29, 2001 9:29 am

The fallen angel's back - so give him a big hand JENNY GILBERT in The Independent on Sunday reviews Michael Clark Company and 'Don Q' by The Royal Ballet: He will. He won't. He might. Anyone would think Michael Clark was some kind of fluff-headed diva, the number of times he changed his mind over whether to appear in his own comeback show at Sadler's Wells. Now approaching 40, the fallen angel of modern dance is said to have had qualms about his ability to meet the technical challenges he sets in his latest work. He was also curious to see how well his early post-punk material would stand up without his physical presence on stage. But would the fans still turn out if he blanked it? What's a Michael Clark event without Michael Clark? <A HREF="http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=011028002811&query=ballet+or+dance" TARGET=_blank>click for more</A>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited October 29, 2001).]

Emma Pegler · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2001 1:44 am

Return of the enfant terrible Dance rebel Michael Clark makes his first hometown appearance in 15 years this weekend. He talks to Susan Mansfield of The Scotsman about family, survival and turning 40 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>The approach of the age of 40 tends to bring on fits of introspection. Suddenly one realises one has an allotted span in this world, and it’s getting used up. Thinking is done. Things change. Michael Clark, bad boy of British ballet, fallen angel, erstwhile punk, rebel and drug addict, is 39. He’s thinking, and it’s changing him. Such introspection is often accompanied by a homecoming, a retreading of old territory. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why, this weekend, Clark will be dancing at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen for the first time in 15 years. He also wants his family to see his new show, Before and After: The Fall. "It’s important to share these things with the people who have given you so much. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><A HREF="http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=119902&keyword=ballet" TARGET=_blank>more...</A> [This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited October 31, 2001).]

Joanne · **Posted:** Sun Nov 04, 2001 1:36 am

Article in the Sunday Times <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> The ancient Egyptian god Atum was thought to have created the entire world through mastur- bation, although the precise mechanics were never made clear. Michael Clark's ambitions weren't nearly as grandiose - to make his first piece of dance in nearly three years - but he has gratefully seized upon the same methodology. Rise, the second half of his new show Before and After: The Fall, is not so much a dance as a quick tour through an imaginary theme park called Wankland. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><A HREF="http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/11/04/sticuldnc02001.html?" TARGET=_blank> MORE </A>

Joanne · **Posted:** Mon Nov 05, 2001 12:29 am

Review in The Herald <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>The only Scottish port of call on the Michael Clark Company tour was Aberdeen, the choreographer's home town - which, if memory serves me right, has not seen Clark dance since he was one of the children in Scottish Ballet's Nutcracker back in the early seventies. In truth, the audience did not catch more than a glimpse or three of him this time round, for Clark - now approaching 40, though still as arresting as ever - is focusing more on making dance than performing it these days.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><A HREF="http://www.theherald.co.uk/arts/archive/5-11-19101-23-24-0.html" TARGET=_blank> MORE </A>

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Fri Nov 09, 2001 5:57 am

Here's a review from Luciana Brett from elsewhere in the forum: MICHAEL CLARK SADLER’S WELLS, 24 - 28 OCTOBER 2001 It is hard to say whether Michael Clark shocks us or disappoints us.Of course, in Clark’s dances of the early 80’s, bare bums, exposed breasts, platform boots and wigs looked naughty, especially coming from a dancer originally trained at the Royal Ballet School.But revived today as the first part of "Before and After: The Fall", 80’s punk music and provocative behaviour doesn’t shock us, instead one could say it amuses us. The irreverent nature of the piece survives only in its ironies, the way, for example, the dancers demonstrate a tough, sexy attitude, dressed in ‘military’ shirts and fluffy pants, while maintaining an immaculate classical technique. Moving on nearly two decades from this youthful impudence, and Clark has far from mellowed. In the program’s second half he collaborates with Sarah Lucas, considered to be one of the most ‘in-yer- face’ of the Young British Artists. Clark’s new piece "Rise", with Lucas as designer, certainly packs the stage with jaw-dropping effects. Fluorescent light tubes carried above their heads by the dancers, a film showing a man masturbating (thankfully he is turned away from us), a 23 foot forearm and fist, which moves up and down, insinuating the same thing, and a giant ball of metal wire rolled across the stage manipulated by a dancer walking inside it.Within the space of twenty minutes Clark manages to show off each of these startling images, in quick succession, but without really exploring any one of them in depth. The initial impact is not sustained and each section tails off in anti-climax. It is quite intriguing, for example, when the light tubes first appear but then all we are offered are a few slow, simple formations by the dancers, followed by the lights going out one by one, to no particular effect.While the technique of Clark’s movement is highly energetic, powered with precision and accuracy, it seems rather feebly related to Lucas’ ham-fisted (literally!) designs.The end result was surprise rather than thought-provoking depth.

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed May 22, 2002 12:45 am

The Michael Clark Company By Michael Seaver in The Irish Times There is something sad about Michael Clark still trying to trade on a reputation as the "bad boy" of British dance. If you are shocked by women in leotards with bare bottoms, dildos and fake masturbation, then you should steer clear of Before and After: The Fall. You should also probably stay indoors for fear of catching sight of your average stag or hen night, as this will probably push you over the edge. In reality, this dance is about as risqué as Benny Hill.The first part, Fall, features old work of Clark's, and none of it has aged well. Set to music by The Fall a series of short dances features goose-stepping ballerinas, a prosthetic ***** that gets cut off (or, rather, the clip holding it on is snapped open) and a goldfish-eating scene.<A HREF="http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2002/0522/109220459ATCLARKE.html" TARGET=_blank>click for more</A>

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Apr 23, 2003 2:05 am

'My past is kind of obscene'
Michael Clark, former bad boy of dance, has silenced the chainsaws and thrown away the dildos. He tells John O'Mahony in The Guardian how he cleaned up his act.

When it comes to giving interviews, Michael Clark claims to have one overriding golden rule. He won't talk about drugs, breakdowns, alleged self-destructive streak or periods of voluntary exile. What matters these days is the work, the pure essentials of dance. "I think I've just been too unguarded," he says apologetically, in an ante-room of the Greenwich Dance Agency. "It got to the point where all people would talk about were the extraneous details, the costumes, the sets, the props, the life story. So that was when I decided to impose these restrictions."

However, it must be remembered that the very basis of Clark and his work has always been transgression - not so much breaking rules but bringing about their complete destruction. Even as a teenage prodigy in the early 1980s at the Royal Ballet School, he risked everything when he was caught sniffing glue and almost expelled.

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,940726,00.html]click for more

*****************************************

Footwork on difficult ground
By Richard Wolfson for The Financial Times

Michael Clark is one of the few truly legendary, iconoclastic figures of British dance. In the 1980s he shook the dance world by employing extreme music by groups such as Manchester's post- punk comedians The Fall, and the ambiguous mock-Fascistic racket of Slovenia's Laibach. He populated his stage with nude dancers (nude except for jackboots, that is), who were wont to run around brandishing buzzing chainsaws. He regularly used non-dancer friends like amply proportioned designer Leigh Bowery, who appeared on stage wearing grotesque costumes.

Age has not particularly restrained Clark, even though he's now just turning 40. A recent work, a collaboration with young British artist Sarah Lucas, featured a giant mechanical masturbating hand. The emphasis is on spectacle, an unresolved tension between beauty and violence, an anarchic sense of humour, and a feeling that anything could happen - and probably will. Recent press material has concentrated on Clark's private life - his battle with drugs (now won), his alcoholic father, and his love life (he once simulated sex on stage with his then boyfriend, the American choreographer Stephen Petronio).

[url=http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=030421000691&query=dance&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Form]click for more

Joanne · **Posted:** Fri Apr 25, 2003 2:48 am

Article from The Independent.

Quote:

My, how time flies. The 20 years since Michael Clark first began to stimulate and irritate us in equal measure have gone by in a flash. Back then, he was a Royal Ballet School renegade, mixing a potent cocktail of styles. He took his Cecchetti ballet training, shook it up with contemporary dance, added a twist of his boyhood Scottish dancing, and finished it off with a large slug of the clubby, punk culture common to friends such as the late Leigh Bowery (who designed and performed in his shows).

MORE

Joanne · **Posted:** Mon Apr 28, 2003 4:19 am

Review from The Guardian.

Quote:

Michael Clark blazed a trail through the 1980s, churning together ballet, rock and clubland fashion accessorised with chainsaws and dildos. A shooting star, he burnt out spectacularly in the 1990s, making a tentative return to orbit in 1998 with current/SEE, and a surer one in 2001 with Before and After: The Fall.

MORE

Joanne · **Posted:** Tue Apr 29, 2003 2:59 am

Review from The Telegraph.

Quote:

Michael Clark is 40, and he has spent half of his career in comebacks. I started watching him in the 1990s, but nothing I've seen has displaced his early reputation: the rebellion against ballet (in which he trained to a very high standard), the club-culture theatricality of his early hits, the new audience he found, the heroin addiction.

MORE

And The Times.

Quote:

ONE of the appeals of the endearingly punk choreographer Michael Clark is his unpredictability. You never know quite what you’re in for at one of his shows. But his one-off event at the Barbican last week really had us guessing.
Clark announced that he was gathering around him some of his favourite collaborators, including the fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, the artist Sarah Lucas and the musician Susan Stenger, for a night of “wilfully wild experimentation”. What would they get up to?

MORE

[ 29 April 2003, 05:01 AM: Message edited by: Joanne ]

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Fri May 02, 2003 1:49 pm

Would, Should, Can, Did, Barbican Hall London, ****
By Nadine Meisner for The Independent

"That's what's been announced," said the publicist Miles anxiously as he handed out the programme. "But what will actually happen is anybody's guess." True to form, Michael Clark was keeping not just his dancers on their toes and, true to form, his name packed the house. But form is what Clark has found again. In keeping with his show's title Would, Should, Can, Did, he did superbly. Miles needn't have worried.

The Barbican's genre-mixing Only Connect season was an ideal showcase for this one-off event, since Clark has always sought to link up with artists from other fields.

click for more

Joanne · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2003 4:27 am

Review from the Observer.

Quote:

It was billed as an evening of 'wilfully wild collaboration' and we weren't disappointed. Invited to take part in the Barbican's genre-bending series, Only Connect, Michael Clark called on fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, visual artists Cerith Wyn Evans and Sarah Lucas and musician Susan Stenger to help him create a series of artistic experiments in Would, Should, Can, Did.

Of course Clark is no stranger to extreme collaboration (previous conspirators include The Fall, Leigh Bowery and Lucas, who designed the sets for 2001's masturbatory Rise ). He is the most rock'n'roll of all our modern dancers. But a new maturity is seeping into Clark's work, as he exchanges the role of punk provocateur for a playful neoclassicism.

MORE


	public forum

Michael Clark Company

Who is online