With the conviction that actions speak louder than words, Michael Clark has transformed the face of the contemporary dance world since launching his own company in 1984.
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“Rock is my rock. It has been vital to me at a personal level; it has shaped me as an individual as well as an artist,” says Clark. His collaborations with individualistic musicians like Wire, Laibach, The Fall, Jarvis Cocker and Scritti Politti, as well as boundary-breaking fashion designers and visual artists including BodyMap, Leigh Bowery, Trojan, Sarah Lucas, Charles Atlas, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Peter Doig have marked him as “British dance’s true iconoclast”.
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“Michael’s choreography was like nothing I had ever seen – the movement and musicality, the props and costumes, it was so edgy, brave, creative, sexy, and fluid – at a time when fluidity wasn’t fluid. It just set you alight,” says musician Brix Smith Start, who fondly recalls the joys of Clark’s friendship and collaboration. “Michael was part of a very fabulous London scene. We hung out, partied hard, and lived the most decadent, debauched, and penniless life. We were all just scraping around but we were rich in everything, it didn’t matter about money. Our friendship shaped me as a person today.”
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In conjunction with Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, a new Barbican exhibition and Prestel catalogue, we speak with four of Clark’s many collaborators over the years for an insight into the enfant terrible of contemporary dance.
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