Lindsay Kemp (1938-2018) 

 

Born near Liverpool in 1938, Kemp became fascinated with dance when he was a child. At seventeen, he auditioned for Ballet Rambert and earned a scholarship, but he needed to complete his military service first. In a 2016 BBC  interview  he described his time in the Air Force as, "Challenging, I didn’t march . . . I danced.”

In the 1960s, after attending Bradford Art College and then studying with expressionist dancer Hilde Holger and French mime Marcel Marceau, he formed his own dance company. He first attracted attention with appearances at the 1968 Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Our Lady of the Flowers based on Jean Genet's Notre Dame des Fleurs.  

In the summer of 1966 he met David Bowie in London, after one of his shows. 

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"He came to my dressing room and he was like the archangel Gabriel standing there, I was like Mary, It was love at first sight" Kemp said.

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Bowie became his student and lover, performing in Kemp's show, Pierrot in Turquoise. ​He mentored Bowie in bodily expression and under Kemp’s tutelage, Bowie discovered mime, kabuki theatre, and commedia dell’arte forms.  Through his exaggerated movements and flouting of gender norms Kemp became Bowie's inspiration for the now-iconic persona of  Ziggy Stardust. ​

 

In 1972, Kemp staged and performed in Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust shows at

London’s Rainbow Theatre.

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Kemp is often said to have taught Kate Bush how to dance. The singer would go

on to dedicate a song, “Moving,” to him: 

“To call him a mime artist is like calling Mozart a pianist,”

Bush said in a recent tribute.  

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Kemp continued to mentor younger generations until his death in 2018.

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Kemp was also a painter who created characterful and beguiling portraits accompanied by wonderfully expressive drawings.

 

"I started painting when I started dancing.  Like most children I began scribbling, I’d scribble on everything, like children do, but I more than most, I think. I just always did it because it gave me pleasure. And it was the same thing as with dancing, I realised my drawings also made people smile. They are never very serious, or if they are then they’re disguised, you know, like my conversation, with frivolity."