A virtuosic genius. A maverick. A Muse. It is difficult to find the words to describe the ground-breaking work of dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, whose transgressive stagecraft combined classical ballet with a strong punk aesthetic. Born in a village outside Aberdeen, Clark experienced—for lack of a better term—a Billy Elliot moment; first attending his sister's Scottish dance classes at the age of four and then moving to London to train at the Royal Ballet School. Instead of forging ahead with the rote career progression that most ballet dancers take, he abandoned the traditional institution in search of something more radical.

In this editorial partnership with the Barbican, Clark reminiscences about his practice and career to date with one of his oldest friends, Les Child, to celebrate the Barbican exhibition Micheal Clark: Cosmic Dancer. One of the biggest retrospectives ever dedicated to a living choreographer, Micheal Clark: Cosmic Dancer looks back at the Scottish legend’s pioneering work in contemporary dance, from the 1980s to today. The show, which was curtailed because of COVID, included film, photography, and archive material from Clark’s astounding oeuvre, presented alongside commissions from old and new collaborators, such as Sarah Lucas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Cerith Wyn Evans, Peter Doig, Silke Otto-Knapp, and Duncan Campbell.

In 1984, at the age of 22, Clark founded the Michael Clark Company with Les Child as the principal dancer. He took his classical training and combined it with London’s fashion, punk, and queer scenes, then chose a soundtrack—always turned up to eleven—that blasted music by The Fall, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Lou Reed. It was this cross-pollination of influences and styles that quickly made Clark a defining figure in the British cultural landscape.

The iconoclast has been linked to many counter-cultural figures over the years, however, one of his most enduring works—nearing performance art—is Charles Atlas’s Hail the New Puritan (1986), a wild mockumentary about a day in the life of the Michael Clark Company. In the film, as well as in real life, he stretched his dancers to the limit. They would perform an arabesque 7-inch platform shoes, pirouette in bottomless leotards, and scandalize audiences with offensive hand gestures and on-stage dildos. Regardless of whether his choreography was shocking or comedic, the technical prowess was nonetheless formidable.

Another example of his irreverent approach is the 1987 dance piece Because We Must,which features Leigh Bowery disrupting a Chopin dance trio with a chainsaw. We also must not forget his 1994 ballet, O, where his mother appears topless in a re-enactment of his birth. As Clark once said: "This God-given gift they think I've got... I think my responsibility is to abuse it, find a different way of using it." 

Awarded an honor by the Queen for services to dance in 2014, Clark still shows no signs of slowing down. If Micheal Clark: Cosmic Dancer just had one thing to say, it’s that punk is not dead.

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer | Barbican Art Gallery, UK | 7 October 2020 – 3 January 2021