British choreographer Richard Alston has leapt from hippy rebel to member of the recent dance company with impressive ease, writes Sanjoy Roy
primarily a drop-out, then a rebel, Richard Alston has become part of the new dance establishment. He was only ever interested in doing his own thing: developing a dance language and conversing with music.
Born in 1948, Richard Alston was educated at Eton, but – true to the spirit of the 60s – dropped out at 16 to go to art college. A year later, inspired by a Royal Ballet presentation (Frederick Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardée), he decided that he would become a choreographer. Fortuitously, the Contemporary Dance Trust – forerunner of London Contemporary Dance Theatre (LCDT) and School – was founded at approximately closely the same time, and Alston began classes there.
He began choreographing instantly away. His formalist focus, which gained impulsion after he and fellow student Siobhan Davies went to see the Merce Cunningham company in France, was very dissimilar to the theatrical style that LCDT was developing. Though he made his first piece for them at just 21, Alston again turned away from the mainstream to set up the country's first option contemporary dance group, Strider. A loose collective influenced by America's Judson Dance Theatre, Strider experimented with everyday movement, multimedia, task- or process-based compositional methods, and performed in non-theatre spaces such as galleries, halls and the outdoors. It survived only three years, but was a influential influence in establishing an independent new dance sector.
for more details please visit the guardian.co.uk
primarily a drop-out, then a rebel, Richard Alston has become part of the new dance establishment. He was only ever interested in doing his own thing: developing a dance language and conversing with music.
Born in 1948, Richard Alston was educated at Eton, but – true to the spirit of the 60s – dropped out at 16 to go to art college. A year later, inspired by a Royal Ballet presentation (Frederick Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardée), he decided that he would become a choreographer. Fortuitously, the Contemporary Dance Trust – forerunner of London Contemporary Dance Theatre (LCDT) and School – was founded at approximately closely the same time, and Alston began classes there.
He began choreographing instantly away. His formalist focus, which gained impulsion after he and fellow student Siobhan Davies went to see the Merce Cunningham company in France, was very dissimilar to the theatrical style that LCDT was developing. Though he made his first piece for them at just 21, Alston again turned away from the mainstream to set up the country's first option contemporary dance group, Strider. A loose collective influenced by America's Judson Dance Theatre, Strider experimented with everyday movement, multimedia, task- or process-based compositional methods, and performed in non-theatre spaces such as galleries, halls and the outdoors. It survived only three years, but was a influential influence in establishing an independent new dance sector.
for more details please visit the guardian.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment