Lindsay Kemp - choreographer and teacher to Bowie and Kate Bush dies aged 80
Lindsay Kemp, the multi-talented dancer, actor, mime artist and choreographer who taught David Bowie and Kate Bush, has died at the age of 80.
Kemp grew up in a working-class family in South Shields (his father, a merchant seaman, was lost at sea when Kemp was two). After attending Bradford Art College during which time fellow student, David Hockney, took him to see his first ballet, Kemp studied mime under Marcel Marceau before forming his own dance company in the early Sixties.
In 1966, he met a young David Bowie (then known as David Jones) when the aspiring pop star attended one of his classes and the two began a relationship. Although it was brief, they remained friends and Kemp choreographed Bowie's acclaimed Ziggy Stardust concerts in 1972.
However, it was the arrival of his show Flowers at the Edinburgh Festival (based on Genet's Notre Dame des Fleurs) in 1976 which put Kemp on the theatrical map and this production was seen by an 18-year-old called Kate Bush who immediately signed up for lessons with Kemp. Indeed Bush's idiosyncratic (and much-mocked) theatrical dance moves can be attributed to her time spent studying with him. Kemp later appeared in the singer's 1993 film, The Line, The Cross and The Curve.
As an actor, Kemp is probably best remembered for his role as the creepy landlord in the cult horror film, The Wicker Man (1973). He also appeared in several of Derek Jarman's works, including Jubilee (1977).
Since the early Eighties, Kemp had lived on the continent and he occasionally produced opera in Italy such as Il Barbiere di Siviglia and, most recently, Die Zauberflöte at Livorno in 2016. He died there today.
