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Barbican Art GalleryThe air of a memorial hangs over this exhibition dedicated to the groundbreaking Scottish choreographer
Michael Clark was a streetwise angel of a dancer, leaving the Royal Ballet school in 1979 before his finals and dancing his first solo in a Richard Alston piece for the Ballet Rambert just two years later. As a choreographer, he preserved the delicacy of classical ballet but added a lightness, a joyful collegiality devoid of self-regard. He collaborated with an entire generation of 1980s and 1990s club kids, costumiers, designers, musicians, film-makers, artists and theatre-makers from Leigh Bowery to the Fall, thriving in the era of Blitz kids, Bowie and Buffalo boys, in a rough-edged, pre-smartphone Britain that is much missed and long gone.
Cosmic Dancer memorialises Clark’s life and work, but there is a weird disconnect, a diffusion and dank lack of effervescence. Without the planned (but now, sadly, cancelled) programme of live performances and talks, his freshness is lost. The exhibition is like a deconstructed documentary. A vast archive of Michael Clark Company performance footage and interviews and the giant hanging screen display devised by artist Charles Atlas are being presented at a time when the entire nation is screen-fatigued. Continue reading...