Lindsay Kemp: My Life and Work with David Bowie.

Lindsay Kemp My Life and Work with David Bowie

In conversation with Marc Almond at Ace Hotel London

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Marc Almond and Lindsay Kemp by Richard Haughton, Wiltons Music Hall, 26th June 2015. Front and back cover photograph of Lindsay Kemp by Tim Walker 2015

Lindsay Kemp My Life and Work with David Bowie In conversation with Marc Almond Hosted by Nicholas Pegg At Ace Hotel London With special guests, in order of appearance, Ernesto Tomasini, Konstantin Lapshin, Neal Whitmore and Holly Johnson Produced by Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky Programme designed by Ewan Buck and David Kemp Edited by Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky 17 May 2016

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Introduction Tonight’s historic event is the culmination of Lindsay Kemp’s two week Artist’s Residency at Ace Hotel. This residency is Lindsay’s first public appearance in the UK for 15 years and was brought about to coincide with his invitation to teach at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA).

Last tuesday, alongside the creative community, childhood friends whom Lindsay had not seen in 65 years travelled to Ace Hotel from South Shields to see him create the spectacular wall drawing which you can now view on display in the foyer. There are 18 beautiful new drawings called ‘The London Drawings’ opposite his large work. These will be exhibited for six weeks following tonight’s event.

Lindsay discussed these drawings and his childhood with fellow ‘sand dancer’, artist and curator Garry Hunter and actor David Meyer. You can see the film of that event on the AnOther Magazine website now.

I first met Lindsay when I was a 15 year old usher selling ice creams at his production of Cinderella at The Oxford Playhouse. I remember Edward Fox, Adam Ant and Julian Clary spellbound in the audience as the sudden projection of a giant spider on it’s web made the audience gasp. It was terrifying! The darkly atmospheric music by Carlos Miranda created an overwhelming moment; Lindsay emerging from smoke as the American Soprano Annette Merriweather presided over an unusually harrowing birth of the infant Cinderella. ‘Years passed’ (as the caption reads in ‘Balthazar’) and I embarked on an eight year journey, making my feature documentary about Lindsay Kemp. Filming in Japan, Italy and the UK, I will never forget The Imperial Princess Kiko coming backstage to warmly greet her close friend in perfect English.

19 security men lined the corridor and

Japan’s master wig-maker burst into tears when introduced to Lindsay in his dressing room, sobbing loudly (a great compliment in Japanese culture). Tonight you will see a trailer for Lindsay Kemp’s Last Dance, my documentary about Lindsay which will be released later this year. We are also screening an extract from the film David Bowie made with Lindsay in 1970 called The Looking Glass Murders. There are special surprises which we hope you will all enjoy.

I’m grateful to the team at Ace Hotel without whom tonight would not have been possible: Tas Elias, Penny Watson and Vickie Hayward. I couldn’t have done without the help of Daniela Maccari, Devon Buchanan, Ewan Buck and David Kemp who have designed this beautiful programme. David Kemp has travelled all the way here from Australia for tonight’s celebration.

Lindsay is a talent who only comes along once in very few generations and we are overjoyed to be with him tonight. As David Bowie said, ‘One of the most exciting people I worked with was Lindsay Kemp’.

Brian Eno has also sent a message to everyone here tonight: “David [Bowie] had a secret weapon: Lindsay Kemp. Lindsay was, is, and always has been, extraordinary”.

By Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky

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Tonight’s Programme ‘Welcome!’ from your hosts Marc Almond and Nicholas Pegg Ernesto Tomasini and Konstantin Lapshin perform a short suite of songs for Lindsay Kemp

Lindsay Kemp, Milan, 1979, with a costume that was also borrowed by Mick Jagger for the ‘Rock ‘ n’ Roll Circus’ TV show. Photo by Guido Harari

A trailer for Lindsay Kemp’s Last Dance, a new film by Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky Lindsay Kemp in conversation with Marc Almond and Nicholas Pegg about his life and work with David Bowie When I live my dream, an excerpt from The Looking Glass Murders (1970) Still point of the turning world, an archive collage by David Haughton.

A dedication to Lindsay Kemp by our special guest Holly Johnson Stay in your seats for a very special finale After the event, the bar will remain open

Contents Biographies. Pages 6 - 15 Lindsay Kemp, p6 ¶ Marc Almond, p8 ¶ Nicholas Pegg, p10 ¶ Ernesto Tomasini, p11 ¶ Konstantin Lapshin, p12 ¶ Neal Whitmore, p13 ¶ Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky, p14 ¶ David Kemp, p14 First Productions. Pages 16 - 19 The Bowie Years. Pages 20 - 31 Chris Wiegand, p20 ¶ ¶ Craig San Roque, p23 ¶ Annie Stainer, p24 ¶ Robert Anthony, p26 ¶ Richard Buckle, p28 This evening’s tributes. Pages 32 - 15 Holly Johnson, p32 ¶ Brian Eno, p33 ¶ Sandy Powell, p34 ¶ Andrew Visnevski, p36 ¶ Marc Almond, p37 Archive Tales. Pages 38-43

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Lindsay Kemp by Tim Walker, 2015.

Lindsay Kemp Born near Liverpool in 1938. From the age of two he grew up in South Shields, where glimpses of magic worlds in the Imperial Cinema or in Christmas Pantomime at the Sunderland Empire fired his imagination and led to him taking dancing classes and organising neighbouring children in back yard performances in which he played all the starring parts. Before long he was drawn irresistibly to London, where he studied with Marie Rambert and Sigurd Leeder, and later with Charles Weidman and Marcel Marceau. He was soon performing in cabaret and musicals and then began creating small companies and productions, marrying tradition and experimentation, and recklessly mixing theatrical genres and styles.

In 1974, the London success of Flowers, a pantomime for Jean Genet brought Kemp and his company overnight success.

Thus began over 25 years of non-stop international touring, mainly in Spain and Italy. Maturing as a performer, director and author, he instinctively synthesised all his many influences and experiences into one unique total dance-theatre style. The combination of popular entertainment, Eros, ritual, parody, melodrama, transgression, wit and emotional intensity, in productions packed with stunning visual and musical impact, caused a sensation everywhere. They exerted a major influence on new developments in the international theatre and dance scene in the 1970s and 80s throughout Europe, North and South America, Israel, Japan, and Australia.

Over the years the Lindsay Kemp Company’s repertoire grew, from Flowers to Salomé, Mr. Punch’s Pantomime, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Duende, Nijinsky, The Big Parade, Alice, Onnagata, Cinderella, Variètè, Dreamdances and

Elizabeth I: Last Dance. And at the centre of every production, as creator but above all as performer, was Lindsay Kemp… today still dancing his way through his seventies, notably in his latest creation, Kemp Dances.

Notable also is his achievements away from his company. In 1972 his staging of ex-company member David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust concerts was a milestone in Rock presentation. He has made films with various directors, including Ken Russell, Derek Jarman, Robin Hardy and Todd Haynes. He has created numerous ballets for dance companies around the world, including two creations for the Rambert Dance Company, The Parades Gone By and Cruel Garden (a collaboration with Christopher Bruce). He has directed twelve different operas for Spanish and Italian opera houses, major exhibitions of his paintings and drawings have been shown in many countries, he is a passionate and much loved teacher and all this, he says, is dancing.

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Marc Almond Born in Southport in 1957, Marc Almond is an internationally acclaimed music artist. He has sold over 30 million records worldwide and is an icon and influence to a generation of musicians.

Marc did a general Art and Design course at Southport Art College before going on to get a 2:1 degree at Leeds Polytechnic Fine Art Department studying Performance Art and Film.

Marc met David Ball at Leeds Art College and formed the internationally successful ‘electro duo’ Soft Cell in 1979.

They went on to record four albums and their single Tainted Love broke all records as the track that remained the longest in the US Billboard Top 100 and received a Brit award for best single of that year.

Soft Cell parted amicably in 1984 to pursue solo projects.

Marc recorded the innovative and influential double album Torment and Toreros with Marc and the Mambas which put Marc in a unique musical place that had one foot in mainstream and the other in the underground.

A diverse and hugely successful solo career followed with over a dozen musical albums and a second number one single, Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart in 1989 with 60’s Legend Gene Pitney.

Marc has been awarded the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award and the Icon Award by Attitude Magazine a Mojo Magazine Inspiration Award and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of Leeds Music College. He is also dubbed in the Russian press, ‘adopted son of Russia’ after the release of Heart on Snow his album of Russian ‘Romance ‘Songs and Russian Folk and Orpheus In Exile, the songs of the late Russian Gypsy Romance singer, dissident and now gay icon Vadim Kozin, in 2009.

The album sold in excess of 45,000 copies

and received rapturous reviews.

As well as a huge body of recordings, Marc has also had two best selling autobiographies, Tainted Life and In Search of The Pleasure Palace, as well as three books of verse; The Angel of Death in the Adonis Lounge, A Beautiful Twisted Night and The End of New York.

Almond is no stranger to the theatrical stage. His credits include Ten Plagues, winner of The Scotman’s Fringe First Award and Almond was highly praised for his role of Seneca in Paris Théâtre du Châtelet’s experimental rock adaptation of Poppea.

Marc’s latest solo album, The Velvet Trail, was released in March 2015 and was closely followed by a sell out European live tour. In November 2015 Marc, together with poet Jeremy Reed and composer Othon made an album of Pop Operetta, Against Nature, based on the book A Rebours by JK Husymans and funded through Kickstarter.

Marc looks forward to performing with Leeds College of Music Contemporary Orchestra and Pop Choir in July 2016 at Leeds Town Hall and London’s Royal Festival Hall.

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Nicholas Pegg is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the life and work of David Bowie. He is the author of The Complete David Bowie, described by the Times Literary Supplement as the work against which ‘all Bowie books must now be measured’. In his capacity as a Bowie expert, Nicholas has worked as a consultant on projects including the acclaimed BBC documentary David Bowie: Five Years, and the Victoria & Albert Museum’s exhibition David Bowie Is, which opened in 2013 and has been touring the world ever since.

Away from the world of David Bowie, Nicholas is an actor, theatre director and writer, with an MA in English Literature from the University of Exeter. On stage and screen his acting work has embraced everything from Oscar Wilde to Agatha Christie, from the title role in Hamlet to an Ugly Sister in Cinderella, and from a nerdy birdwatcher in Doc Martin to a deadly Dalek in numerous episodes of Doctor Who. His work as a director includes Twelfth Night, Diary of a Somebody, Funny Money, Peter Pan, and many audio dramas. His other writing credits include short stories, documentaries, more than thirty theatre shows for children, and the occasional comedy sketch: you may have heard him performing his satirical viral hit The Ukip Shipping Forecast.

Nicholas is currently busy co-producing Decades, a forthcoming concept album by the songwriter David Palfreyman. He is also working on an updated and expanded new edition of The Complete David Bowie, due for publication by Titan Books later this year.

Photo by Barnaby Edwards

Nicholas Pegg

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Photo by Etienne Gilfillan

Ernesto Tomasini An iconoclast and innovative artist, cult performer Ernesto Tomasini moves with ease between classical theatre and performance art and between contemporary music and alternative cabaret. Add to all that a sprinkle of television and cinema and you get an eclectic and exciting body of work. With his 4-octave vocal range, this clownish diva has thrilled audiences, in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank, the Roundhouse and in historical theatres around the world, from Mexico to India and from Russia to Greece. He has worked with directors Lindsay Kemp, Alfonso Cuaron and Roberta Torre, among others, as well as creating his own productions. Tomasini is at the centre of the documentary Heavenly Voices: The Heirs of Farinelli, broadcast on national TV channels all over Europe. He shared the stage with Marc Almond, Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle), Current 93 and has sung the music of Julia Kent (Anthony & the Johnsons), Andrew Liles (Nurse with Wound) and Shackleton. His discography includes ten albums, with his band Almagest! and with composers Othon and Adam Donen. In 2012 he was added to the list of “Italian Excellencies”, in his native country, for services to the arts. Last year he took his new one man show, Ernesto Tomasini: One Life To Live to the National Theatres of Germany and Italy. Earlier in 2016 he gave a masterclass at RADA, modelled for designer Nasir Mazhar and received the “Tessera Preziosa”, the highest honour awarded to Italian artists from the mayor of his hometown, Palermo; equivalent to receiving the ‘keys to the city’ in the United Kingdom.

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Konstantin Lapshin Named “a very special talent” by Murray Perahia, London-based Russian pianist Konstantin Lapshin is a prize-winner in more than 15 national and international competitions. “An impressive technique, and the impulsive, Romantic expression that has been a hallmark of so many Russian pianists, including Rachmaninov and Horowitz”- said Fanfare magazine (USA) about him. Before moving to London, Konstantin completed his studies in the Moscow State Conservatoire and he is currently pursuing the doctoral degree at the Royal College of Music. During his time at the RCM, Konstantin won the Chappell Gold Medal and the college’s highest prize for the most outstanding student (across all disciplines), the Queen Elisabeth Rose bowl. He subsequently played for HRH Prince Charles and in the same year was the nominated ‘Rising Star’ to play at Cadogan Hall, London. Konstantin also teaches at the Royal College of Music and will serve as a Jury member of the Schumann Piano competition in Italy.

Konstantin has given recitals and concerto appearances at various concert halls across Europe including the Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, Cadogan Hall, Steinway Hall, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, the Salle Cortot in Paris.

In 2014 Konstantin was invited to play Rachmaninov’s Concerto no.3 with Odessa Philharmonic and Grammy award-winning conductor and pianist Mikhail Pletnev as part of Rachmaninov Festival in Odessa.

His other festival performances have included the Brighton festival, Chipping Campden festival, Schumann and Beethoven St.Barnabas festivals (UK), Bath Piano Recital Series, “Primavera Classica” (Italy), “Yamaha presents” (Gradus and Parnassum) in Moscow.

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Neal Whitmore Guitarist, songwriter and producer Neal Whitmore is a longtime collaborator with Marc Almond. Born in 1960, Neal grew up in rural Kent surrounded by the sounds of the 60s – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. As a teenager in the early 70s, he revelled in the music of David Bowie, T. Rex and Roxy Music. He taught himself to play guitar by listening to his still-favourite albums and musicians, including Mick Ronson on Ziggy Stardust and Marc Bolan on Electric Warrior.

As Neal X, he was a founding member of the futuristic, electro-glam potentates Sigue Sigue Sputnik, a band which had a 1986 worldwide smash hit with Love Missile F1-11, a song later covered by Bowie during sessions for the Reality album.

Neal has worked with a rich range of legendary names in music, from Johnny Thunders, Adam Ant and Pete Burns, to PJ Proby and Beth Orton. He has been recording and touring the world with Marc Almond for more than 20 years. He’s currently fronting The Montecristos, a 21st-Century, trash rock ‘n’ roll band. Their debut album, Born to Rock ‘n’ Roll, was released last year to critical acclaim.

Neal is thrilled to be honouring Lindsay Kemp this evening by accompanying Marc on guitar.

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Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky is an artist and film maker living in London. Nendie has produced tonight’s event and Lindsay’s Exhibition The London Drawings at Ace Hotel. Her film of The London Drawings is on the AnOther Magazine website.

A graduate of Chelsea College of Art, Nendie was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize and Derwent Drawing Prize in 2013. In 2015 Premiering her film of Lindsay Kemp’s Elizabeth 1: The Last Dance, filmed in Tokyo, Australia and Chile. Her documentary about Lindsay Kemp, Lindsay Kemp’s Last Dance will be released later this year.

She has organised events for The Tate, ICA, The Stephen Lawrence Trust as well as a chess tournament with Garry Kasparov and was artist in residence for the ICA’s 60th birthday. Nendie will release her new short film about Ernesto Tomasini, One Life To Live next month.

She has also published magazines for over 10 years including setting up a multiaward winning magazine for disadvantaged young people called The Cut. She recently started tutoring at University of the Arts and looks forward to being a judge in the Koestler Art Awards in June. www.nendiepintoduschinsky.com

David Kemp David Kemp is an actor with training in Meisner technique, butoh, bouffon and dance. He has performed in theatre, tv (such as the outrageous soap Chances) and films, including EXIT which headlined at Montreal-Fantasia, London Sci Fi and Arizona Underground film festivals. He has also written novels and plays and won the best drama writing award for his short play Monster Porn in Short & Sweet Melbourne 2006. He’s currently performing and filming his own writing, ONE, a series of online monologues. (davidkempactor.com) Experiences which determined him on the acting path were studying architecture and the classics at university, and more importantly, being given a puppet theatre with red velvet curtains made by his mother from an old drawer when he was 3 years old, and seeing the extraordinary realisation of passion that was Lindsay Kemp’s Flowers in Melbourne in 1976.

He organised the world premiere screening of Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky’s film of Lindsay’s Elizabeth I: Last Dance in Melbourne in 2014 and is an occasional art director and designer. He was honoured to design the programmes for the Elizabeth I screening and this event, and is continually inspired by Lindsay’s quote: ‘Everything I do springs from my desire.’

Kemp and his mother Marie. London 1974. Photo copyright Mick Rock, 1974, 2016.

Nendie PintoDuschinsky

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16 First Productions

1948, Lindsay (aged 10) in school uniform.

Girl’s school production of The Princess and the Woodcutter, 1951. Lindsay was Stage Manager.

Girls’ school production in 1952. Lindsay was Stage Manager.

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Birth of a legend A noisy, smoke-filled shipbuilding town South Shields on Tyneside in the 1940s seems an unlikely background for a young boy with a passion to dance and a love of theatre but that was where Lindsay was brought up.

At the age of 10 he was sent as a boarder to Royal Merchant Navy School in Berkshire. This was a co-ed boarding school occupying a grand Victorian Mansion in 500 acres of grounds built as the family home for John Walter, the Proprietor of The Times in the 1860s. The school was founded to educate the children of mariners who had died in the service of the Merchant Navy. It was run on strict naval lines.

The duty bugler sounded ‘Reveille’ each morning to wake up the children; they were marched everywhere during the day and ‘Lights Out’ was the cue for the bugler to sound ‘Last Post’. In the boys’ school the curriculum included lessons in Seamanship, boat pulling and woodwork and many P.E. sessions as well as the normal academic subjects. The boys were encouraged to follow in their father’s footsteps and join the Merchant Navy.

Grenville Boys House – 1948. Lindsay is the black shirted chap playing the handsome prince.

Dancing certainly was very definitely not encouraged but Lindsay did dance. In his first two years at the school his Housemaster helped the boys to put on little plays and Lindsay was very much involved in those. The photo of the boys wearing tiger masks is from that time. Later he entertained the boys in his dormitory by putting on shows of his own, partly I think because it kept the bullies at bay. In the girls’ school, life was a little more civilised and the girls were able to act and sing.

These photographs are from two plays staged in 1951 and 1952 – Lindsay wasn’t acting in them, he was the stage manager and dealt with props and make-up.

The photos show how early in life his creativity showed. His fellow pupils could not imagine, at the time, that they were watching the birth of such a legend.

Through sheer determination, Lindsay worked and continued to develop his unique skills. He well deserves his huge international following and I am proud to be able to say that I was there at school with him at the beginning of his stage career.

By Sylvia Ruth King.

All boys again – Lindsay is on the middle row in black shirt. He helped to make the paper mache ‘tiger masks’.

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Humble beginnings When Lindsay Kemp moved to our road in early 1940, my sister Marcelle and I were immediately drawn to him. He was so different to any of the other boys on the block! We were buddies’ immediately, the three of us embarked on a wonderful childhood friendship.

It was apparent even then that Lindsay was unique. His imagination ran riot, living in a fantasy world, it was wonderful to be part of it.

Marcelle and I were learning Ballet and Tap at Miss Hardy’s Dance School.

When we got home Lindsay would dash over and get us to teach him the steps.

It was obvious even then, that he was a natural dancer. His appetite for dance was so strong that it encouraged him to ask his mother if he could attend Miss Hardy’s too. After several refusals, she eventually gave in and Lindsay was in his element.

In the 1940’s today’s concept of being Gay did not exist to us. It was not easy being a boy who attended dance classes.

Lindsay was subject to name calling such as ‘Sissy’ by the local lads, but he was on a mission and their taunts in no way diminished his resolve to dance.

After learning several sketches and dance routines, most of which were Lindsay’s own creations, Lindsay put on his entrepreneur hat. He decided we should put on shows in our backyard and charge One Penny entrance fee (Quite excessive given that a bag of chips cost 2p!). We rigged up a washing line across the yard and I took down my mother’s bedroom curtains for the stage, I had to sneak them back after each show. For seating, we had rows of wooden crackets (traditional wooden stools used by coal miners) borrowed from our neighbours.

The concerts were very well received and even the odd parent would watch

from the back. (Although on one occasion a boy asked for a refund on his penny as the show was in his opinion a “load of rubbish”). In his productions, he was very serious and bossy, even to us, his close friends. Nevertheless, it was great fun and we enjoyed sharing his creativity, enthusiasm, and sheer energy!

Lindsay always wanted to take the lead, in dance, play and our exploration of damaged targets from German bombing raids. A vivid memory of South Shields (which was heavily targeted) was dashing to our Air Raid Shelters during those dark but equally exciting times.

I vividly remember Lindsay dressed as a blushing bride in one of our sketches, the sheer sight of a young boy dressed in bridal refinery and prancing about was nothing short of hilarious to the audience.

Our showstopper was his parody of the song ‘Little old Lady passing by’. This involved him shuffling about the stage all disheveled sporting a grey knitted shawl wrapped around his head, very much looking the part. This drew laughter and amusement from all quarters.

It goes without saying that Lindsay wanted to be the Star of our shows, but who could have forecast that from those humble wartime beginnings he would become the world famous star he is today.

Another of Lindsay’s ventures was ‘The Hall of Mirrors’. We used the shiny reverse side of large metal Lyons Tea Adverts due to be hung outside the grocers.

We stood them in a row and bent them into convex and concave shapes.

We then put a screen around them made with a clothes horse, draped with an old army blanket. The kids walked behind the screen and laughed hilariously when they saw their contorted bodies.

By Yvonne Litchfield

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Clockwise from top: Marcelle and Yvonne Litchfield. Norman Kemp, Lindsay’s Father before he was killed onboard HMS Patroclus by a U-boat in 1940, Marie Kemp Lindsay’s mother, Norma Kemp who died at the age of 5 from meningitis before Lindsay was born, Lindsay’s grandfather in 1925 on Talbot Road.

Talbot Road today

20 The Bowie Years

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‘I tried to get David Bowie to do Puss in Boots’

Photo by Jak Kilby.

We first met in 1966, probably late summer, when David came to see me perform in a little show called Clowns. He was much taken by it and came to see me afterwards.

It was love at first sight. He asked if he could study with me. A couple of days later, he began doing classes at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden, where I was teaching.

David was a huge hit with the ladies, especially during the improvisations – improvising sailors drowning at sea, animals hunting their prey. Those ladies would have devoured him like the Maenads devouring Dionysus. He seemed quite pleased about it all and came back for another class.

In improvisations, I tell people to listen to the music, to abandon themselves and become totally transported to other places, therefore becoming other characters.

David was always very good at that. God knows, he was a chameleon.

I taught him to express and communicate through his body. I taught him to dance. I taught him the importance of the look – makeup, costume, general stagecraft, performance technique. I gave him books to read and pictures to look at. We talked about kabuki, avantgardists, the world of the music hall, which we were both attracted to. David did wonderful impressions of Stan Laurel.

He was very funny. We talked about Jean Genet, as I was creating a play based on Genet’s Notre Dame des Fleurs. It became Flowers, the show that made me not rich

Kemp with Bowie as Cloud. Performing Pierrot in Turquoise at The Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill, London 4th March 1968.

but famous. We talked about him playing the protagonist.

When I met him, he had become disillusioned and was working in an office.

He may have been considering chucking in music altogether. His voice was haunting and it evoked other favourite singers of mine, notably Jacques Brel. He had that same kind of sentiment and storytelling ability.

He was an A student. He fell in love with the bohemianism of my world.

Together, we began to create a show, Pierrot in Turquoise, for which he wrote the songs. It opened at Oxford Playhouse in 1967. It was staged in Whitehaven, at the Mercury theatre in London and then it went on tour – to Palmers Green. This was the first time that he wore costume and makeup. He played Cloud, a balladeer who commented through his songs on the action of the play, rather in the style of Brecht and Weill. He also played other characters when needed. We did a television version of the show called The Looking Glass Murders. I cringe when I see it now, it was so naive.

David was very easy to direct – he was grateful for every direction, not only in Pierrot but years later in the Ziggy Stardust stage show at the Rainbow theatre. Rehearsals at the Rainbow were a great pleasure: we had an audience of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop; friends would pop by with their bottles of whisky.

David’s wife Angela had visited me in Edinburgh, where I was performing Flowers. She had the Ziggy Stardust LP. She said: “David would like you to direct and assemble the show – and of course to perform. Maybe you could play Starman

22 The Bowie Years and Queen Bitch?” Which I did! I was very inspired by the record and could see the show clearly. I mimed the whole thing out to David and, a few weeks later, it opened.

The set was inspired by 1920s constructivism. We assembled a set with various platforms, which David would very energetically clamber over – sometimes doing costume changes up the ladder from one platform to another. My company were all in the show, perched on different levels wearing masks. It was very high up – I was terrified as I have a fear of heights. David emerged looking marvellous, out of a lot of dry ice, and the audience went crazy. I’d never performed in or directed a show in such a vast venue. And so I was credited with marrying the theatre to rock’n’roll.

There were other projects that didn’t happen. David thought of doing a musical version of Charles Kingsley’s book The Water Babies. I asked if I could play Mrs

Doasyouwouldbedoneby. One Christmas, I asked him to play Puss in Boots in Musselburgh. His agent came back and said that £10 a week wasn’t really enough – could I get it up to £15? Management said no, we couldn’t. What Musselburgh missed!

Lindsay Kemp interview by Chris Wiegand (c) Guardian News & Media Ltd 12th January 2016

Bowie and Kemp by Mick Rock, 1973.

Photo copyright Mick Rock 1973, 2016.

The Bowie Years 23

Pierrot in Turquoise The costumes for Pierrot in Turquoise, composed by Natasha Korniloff to Lindsay’s dream, were a revelation in Seker Silk. You can trace a line from that pandemonium of colour to the Ziggy Stardust wardrobe, and the exuberance of Lindsay’s costuming from then on.

It was in Seker’s Theatre in Rosehill, in midwinter chill, that the drama of Lindsay’s (alleged) suicide attempt took place… or was it David’s… or was it Natasha’s or was it Jack/Orlando’s?

I came into the dressing room ready for the show. Lindsay was sitting dazed before the altar of his makeup mirror. Everything silent. Jack was with him. Taut, tense and pale beneath his dark Othello skin, lips pursed. Not a word, but a glance was there in Lindsay’s direction. A cue.

Maybe he had the razor. Maybe the wrists were bleeding. He seemed stunned.

There was a tale of David leaving him, or David and Natasha leaving together, none of this seemed to touch me much. My issue as stage manager was to get Pierrot on stage.

As I remember it, the thing went like this. Jack’s whisper said ‘Find a way to get him onstage, once he’s on the stage he can’t help but perform. He’ll find his feet’.

I bandaged the wrists, long, long bandage strips. You’ll have to go on with bandages Lindsay, I said. Yes, Jack said. I can’t, he said... You have to... The bandages... Well, do something with them, use the bloody things.

I can’t go on... mascara eyes in the mirror.

Suicide on stage then, dear, make a spectacle of it.

The ladies in Seker’s theatre were restless. Bowie must have gone on, Jack always did, on that you could rely. David would have sung, clearing the ground. We simply had to get Lindsay onto the stage

and into the spotlight. He would have had to face David on the stage and deliver.

Maybe this is a tatter from my dream now.

Maybe it never happened.

Somehow, he went on. The lights picked him up and a new variation of the Pierrot saga began. He stood in the spot and improvised with the bandages, as though discovering them on his wrist for the first time. In Lindsay’s scenic brain the Bowie/ Cloud character must have taken the place of Columbine. Cloud/Columbine/Bowie had run off with Korniloff/Harlequin. And blind Jack Birkett, as the other Harlequin, was feeling his way around stage because everything planned had shifted.

The audience knew nothing of the backroom drama but must have sensed the tension and besides, this was the traditional Pierrot display of unrequited love. The eternal triangle. Alone in the spotlight, Pierrot unwound the bandages.

The white strips unravelled to the floor.

There wasn’t enough blood, we could see that he knew there wasn’t enough blood to make it dramatic. He turned to the ladder which was part of the set. He climbed the ladder, he wove the bandages around his neck, improvising, forging an image of a Pierrot contemplating hanging.

He was astounding, he fell from the ladder, caught himself, imitated the upside down ‘hanged man’ and then fell to the floor. I guess Bowie worked out what to do, and Jack, or something... there is no video film in my memory.

That night showed me something of suicidal histrionics and heart-in-the-mouth risk, and how to turn drama to good effect.

The suicidal edge led somewhere, fed magically back into the performance. Kemp and Bowie are performers. Performance is greater than death.

By Craig San Roque.

24 The Bowie Years

‘The BBC found it too weird’ It was whilst I was still training (albeit like some kind of fish out of water!) at The London School of Contemporary Dance, that my soon to become dear friend and dance partner Jack Birkett (The Incredible Orlando) walked into class one day, smiled and asked me if I would like to come to a mime class. That was my first introduction to the strange and wondrous world of Lindsay Kemp.

It changed my life forever! Thrust almost immediately into the limelight, I found myself suddenly enroute for Edinburgh to create the role of Ernestine in Lindsay’s internationally acclaimed Flowers.

Gloriously tricky and difficult at times, Lindsay has a unique way of teaching you to become yourself. Instead of learning to swim in the world of physical theatre through taking little baby steps, I was plunged head long into the middle of a very deep unfathomable and wondrously mysterious lake where I had to learn to sink or swim. I adored this way of working. I had come home.

Then one day Angela Bowie flew into Edinburgh to announce that David wanted Lindsay to direct and assemble the Ziggy Stardust Concert at the Rainbow Theatre and that Lindsay, Jack and I were to perform in the show. That was the greatest thrill of all!

The Bowie Years 25

This was a Rock Concert of epic dimensions, the like of which had never been seen before. Lindsay’s set was sublime. We had to perform on the most terrifyingly high ladders and scaffolding. At one point someone actually believed I was a mechanical doll who was operated by remote control! The Concert was ludicrously ahead of its time. Mike Rock recorded Jack and I dancing for David’s first promotional Video for John I’m only Dancing. The BBC found it too weird and refused to air it, substituting another background for the song! But it has been called the first rock video. It was not to be aired on British TV for another 7 years!

So I emerged from this incredible journey with Lindsay, bearing the gift that I now so treasure, the ability to be grotesque and beautiful, young and old and able to take an audience on an utterly unpredictable inner voyage into a world of magic, story and dream. I went on to perform my solo shows around the world and to run my own school of physical theatre, Total Theatre.

Dearest Lindsay, Bless you and thank you from the bottom of my heart, for giving me the courage to live my dream, and the ability to help others to live theirs.

By Annie Stainer Left: Kemp and Stainer from the Ziggy Stardust Show at The Rainbow Theatre, probably Starman. Above: Bowie and Stainer from the Ziggy Stardust Show, probably from the beginning of the concert. Facing: Bowie and Stainer from the Ziggy Stardust Show with Birkett, The Incredible Orlando, probably The Width of a Circle.

26 The Bowie Years

Ziggy Stardust and The Pistol Shot Ziggy Stardust concert at the Rainbow Theatre (1972) Well, it was absolutely jam-packed in the theatre, we didn’t have much time because Liza Minelli had been in first and she had a platform built on the stage and we did the same. Lindsay and I did the lighting. During Queen Bitch Lindsay came on in drag and then the others came on in these crocheted, black elastic costumes that looked like a spider’s web. Very uncomfortable but they looked terrific on the stage.

Lindsay and I chose the colours we wanted and there was a whole bunch of lights coming down onto the stage that we used for the Space Oddity number with scaffolding which we lit from the back.

David left the show to us because he knew that’s what we did. Above the stage was a runway, everyone got up there so they could get on the scaffolding ready to climb down. David was at the bottom as everyone came down and the lights gradually came up so you could see them.

They rigged up a lighting box high up at the side of the stage so I could control the follow spot on David.

We had a smoke machine and a bubble machine and dry ice. We had the idea for the look of it with the scaffolding and we had a snow effect which should be projected onto the stage but we projected it up so it was above the audience. I had to cue the machine. It happened by accident because I was playing around and it sent out beams above the audience and on David.

We were meant to tour the show in America but that was cancelled and the Americans staged it over there.

The Pistol Shot (1968) Lindsay used to give classes at the Dance Centre in Covent garden. If he was late I would have to start it for him. David Bowie

came too, he was very good in class. He was quite limber, he couldn’t do the splits but he could move around.

The BBC rang the dance centre to book dancers for The Pistol Shots. Diane South the choreographer was a friend of ours.

She used Lindsay’s class because we had all ages, which was required. David’s partner was Hermione and that’s how they met.

The opening night of Flowers at The Biltmore Theatre on Broadway (1974) At our last dress rehearsal, I slipped coming down a ladder and twisted my ankle. The producers Diana and Herman Shumlin, took me by car to his doctor, who gave me an injection with a very strong painkiller, so I could continue rehearsing.

The next day – our opening night – he came to the theatre to give me another painkiller and said: “You‘ll be ok – it is very strong stuff I have put in there “.

In those days openings were on Sundays, so all the stars could attend.

There were stars everywhere… Lauren Bacall, Angela Landsbury, Ethel Merman, Debbie Reynolds, Chita Rivera, Ann Miller, Liza and her sister Lorna Luft, Angela Bowie and Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote and Jack Nicholson. There was a big party afterwards. It was a glorious evening.

Any other memories of Soho and The Drury Lane Arts Laboratory? (1967-69) Jack, Lindsay and I lived near the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, it was just along the street from us. It was really weird! It was run

by Jack Moore and Jim Haynes. You could do anything there! I went to see Jack and Lindsay perform, and they were painting each other and throwing the paint around.

You had to do that kind of show to go there Interview with Robert Anthony by Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky

Biographies 27

Clockwise from top: Anthony as Elsa Lancaster in the Bride of Frankenstein, Birkett (The Incredible Orlando) as Judy Garland, Kemp as Buster Keaton in ‘Legends’ at The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (c. 1971).

Kemp, Birkett (The Incredible Orlando) and Anthony in Legends at The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (c. 1971).

Kemp and Birkett (The Incredible Orlando) Berwick Street Market, Soho, London 1967. Photo by Jak Kilby.

Rehearsal for Salome at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh. Anthony as Salome’s slave (with blonde wig made

by Anthony to match Salome’s red wig so as to appear as Salome’s doppleganger.) Birkett (The incredible Orlando) as Herodias, Salome’s mother.

28 The Bowie Years

Flowers I usually grind to a halt half-way through the novels of Jean Genet because there are so many words I do not know, but I get the message clearly enough to recognise that Lindsay Kemp’s Flowers, which I went belatedly to see last week – and went two nights running, actually paying the second time – mirrors truthfully Genet’s individual fusion of sex, masochism, religion, blasphemy, beauty and squalor.

Kemp devised this dragodrama … and he performs in it with a talented company. The devising is brilliant, the direction is masterly, the performance is overpowering. Productionwise, it is the most stunning show in London. I kick myself for having been kept away from Flowers for so long by a summer surfeit of ballet and a distaste for the pallid pathos of mimes like Marceau, whom I presumed Kemp would resemble. Well, they have something in common, and Kemp’s silent slow-motion arias are so long-drawn-out that they could be thought embarrassing.

Yet I find them as necessary to the whole as, say, the appearance of Martha Graham with her company when she was over seventy.

Andrew Wilson’s electronic score, with a collage of popular and classical music, sacred and profane, contributes enormously to the savage spectacle. The set, with its upper gallery, is mysterious.

The ragged costumes could not be bettered. The make-ups are the most original and poetic since Kathakali.

Unforgettable scenes are the frigid reception of Kemp on his first slow entry into the dive, dressed as a raddled old bride, then the arrival of the Byronic groom, Neil Caplan, and the waltz that converts the pimps and whores into romantic dreamers; the mocking of the Crucified, which shocked me till I realised

it was the modern equivalent of Breughel and Bosch designed to arouse pity and terror; the Cavafy-like falling in love of the two angel boys, Caplan and Tony Maples, staring into each other’s eyes at the cafe table, impervious to the strip-teasing whores (from Tudor’s Judgement of Paris); the final unmasking in a welter of blood.

I have never seen strobe lights used to greater effect than in the last scene. It really was as if the Veil of the Temple were rent in twain. We could use a producer of Lindsay Kemp’s genius at Covent Garden, at the Coliseum and at the National.

By Richard Buckle Sunday Times 14 July 1974

A live drawing made during a performance of Flowers by Feliks Topolski.

All photographs of Flowers by Richard Haughton other than backstage photo in the dressing room. At the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh before a performance of Flowers (c.1970).

Far left; Christmas Brown, with mirror Robert Anthony, Kemp and behind Kemp, Giles Webster.

The Bowie Years 29

30 The Bowie Years

Above and below left: Kemp in Clown’s Hour, one man show with piano accompaniment by Micharl Garrett. Little Theatre Club, St Martins Lane, London, 4 August 1967. Below right: Kemp, outdoor portrait, Soho, London, 18 September 1967. Facing page: Kemp, portrait Soho, November 1969. All photos by Jak Kilby.

The Bowie Years 31

32 Tributes

As a teenager, like many others I was led to the legend of Lindsay Kemp by David Bowie, the child catcher of my imagination. I used Lindsay’s mascara and eyeliner-laden eyes, taken from a photograph in a sunday supplement as a template for a silk screen and printed them onto an Eric’s Club t-shirt, worn with pride. The nearest I got to an actual performance was when the Ballet Rambert came to town performing Cruel Garden (choreographed by Lindsay Kemp and Christopher Bruce) at the Liverpool Playhouse.

It was a magical event for me and stirred and inspired my resolve to follow the yellow brick road of the performing arts.

Holly Johnson May 17th 2016

Photo by Trevor Leighton, 2015.

‘I silk-screened Lindsay’s eyes onto a T-Shirt and wore it with pride.’

Tributes 33

‘Lindsay was, is and always has been extraordinary.’

Even though I was part of it, I hope I can be forgiven for saying that the 1972 Rainbow show featuring David Bowie and Roxy Music on a double bill was pretty amazing. But David had a secret weapon: Lindsay Kemp. Lindsay was, is, and always has been, extraordinary.

Happy Birthday Lindsay!!! Don’t count the candles...

Photo by Shamil Tanna.

Brian Eno May 17th 2016

34 Tributes

I first saw Lindsay perform on stage at the Roundhouse in the mid 70’s when I was still a teenager at school. I’d come across him, like so many others of my generation through the worship and obsessive consumption of anything David Bowie related. But it was Lindsay and Flowers that changed my life. I was overwhelmed by the spectacle, the diversity and unconventionality was more thrilling than anything I’d experienced before and it was there and then that I decided this was a world I wanted to be part of. Cut to about five years later when I was at my second year at art school studying theatre design. I told my tutors my dream was to work with Lindsay one day. They scoffed and told me he lived abroad and wasn’t interested in girls!

However, that summer Lindsay was in London teaching classes at the Pineapple Dance Centre in Covent Garden. I grabbed my leg warmers and signed up immediately with no idea of what was in store. Within an hour I was forced to lose all inhibition, pretend to be a cherry blossom and fall in love with the person standing beside me. The class ended with us Can Canning around the room to Offenbach.

Exhilarated. I told him after I would love to show him some work and he invited me to tea. The rest is history. We became friends immediately, I went to all his classes and ended up traveling to Barcelona to visit when he went home later in the summer.

Lindsay promised me work, I believed him

and never went back to college.

He kept his word and within six months I was designing costumes for Nijinsky in Milan at the studio theatre at La Scala. My first job! Apart from being an endless source of inspiration and hugely entertaining company, Lindsay was a fabulous and generous teacher. I learned more in the first three weeks in Milan than in three years at art school. As an artist and designer himself Lindsay has the ability to communicate exactly what he wants yet give freedom to those around him to explore their own creativity. I was thrown in at the deep end, really the best way to learn. I had to make many of the costumes myself, was introduced to the art of dying and breaking down, often with a blow torch, and received in return the unforgettable experience of contributing to those incredible works of art that have shaped my own career. I got to work with my hero.

No one can tell a story like Lindsay.

I never tire of tales from his childhood.

The tiny details, the sounds, smells and poetry that are evoked are unforgettable.

Even if they are embellished it’s all part of the charm.

He also makes me laugh like no one else.

We have got into so many scrapes together ending with uncontrollable hysterics that it’s hard to pick a few.

There was the time in Barcelona in the legendary absinthe bar where we stayed out all night and I was given the task of trying to placate his adored elderly mother who

Sandy Powell at the Bafta Awards 2016. Photo by Richard Young.

‘Nothing will ever be as earth-shatteringly beautiful as Lindsay’s blood-filled mouth screaming silently at the end of Flowers’

Tributes 35

was waiting back at the hotel whilst Lindsay lingered outside. It didn’t work, she never trusted me again accusing me of leading her son astray!

The time we both went to a jazz dance class at the Pineapple and got thrown out for giggling in the back getting the steps wrong.

The time In Berlin I had to take Lindsay in agony to the dentist he was terrified of by way of several bars...

The time we tried to cook Christmas dinner in his apartment in Livorno when the oven door wouldn’t close so we used gaffer tape and elastic. The Brussel sprouts burned.

The list is endless.

Like the taste of first love which can never be repeated or the first drink which can never be bettered, Lindsay was my first mentor and teacher whose influence and inspiration has never paled. Nothing will ever be as earth shatteringly beautiful or haunting as his blood filled mouth screaming silently at the end of Flowers.

Even when the lights go out the vision still remains forever with me as the moment that changed my life. Thank you Lindsay.

Sandy Powell

36 Tributes

‘The arts are enriched by the mavericks’ Flowers at the Roundhouse, Salome somewhere west of Kilburn and, a few years later, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Sadler’s Wells. Revelatory rites of theatrical passage, a cultural “kick”, unleashing deep-seated passions and visions. A Pandora’s box resulting in a lifetime’s fidelity to his unique vision. A distant acolyte, I formulated my personal creative credo upon the sensuality, vitality and Dionysiac release I found in his work. A painter has his canvas, so Lindsay had the stage, to fill with wonder, glittering personalities and drastic multiple action.

While training for the theatre, I was singled out for “cultural and stylistic incompatibility”. Flowers became the bridge - between the explosive visionary theatre of the late 1960s (as in Brook’s Marat/Sade in London, then, in Poland, The Tomaszewski Pantomime, Konrad Swinarski’s brutal vision of A Midsummer’s Dream and Grotowski’s uncompromisingly visceral work, all of which had ravished my senses) and the kind of theatre I wanted to make, slowly, chaotically evolving in the psyche of a young student - suspended high over the abyss of the merely pedestrian or predictable. In due course, Lindsay’s influence upon me found expression in the words of the less-than-supportive funding bodies, describing my productions as “text-based visual theatre”. This shewed how close I’d come to fulfilling my consciously wrought homage to Lindsay.

The arts are enriched by the mavericks, the one-offs, the ones always in danger of being dragged to the stake. Not by the box-tickers, but by the unique theatre visionaries.

Disappointing as it was to me, it was not surprising that Lindsay had decided to make his residence and work far away from us.

It has been my long-held secret wish to bring Lindsay over to work with our students at RADA. There is a kind of poetic justice and artistic full circle in that this flame of my youthful imagination and creativity should now be back in London working with our MA Theatre Lab students and firing their souls and imaginations - as he did mine.

Andrew Visnevski April 10th 2016

Tributes 37

‘The unholy trinity of Bowie, Lindsay and Genet was intoxicating’

Marc Almond Photo by Jamie McLeod.

As a young teenager I was looking for a doorway to escape from the small seaside town of Southport, to other worlds that I felt would allow me to fully express myself in ways that Southport would not. David Bowie offered me a doorway when he talked about music, art, film and literature. I followed where he led and he led me to Lindsay.

My fascination with Lindsay grew and in my mind a mystique grew around him. In later years I would get to see his performances and was entranced as I’d always expected I would be, but back then it was only photos of him in his startling vivid makeup, gorgeous feathers

and sequins - and sometimes even what seemed to be a distinct lack of clothing.

He was otherworldly, outrageous. He was divine decadence personified. A mythical androgynous creature of the night. At the time he was, I suppose, the manifestation, along with Bowie and some of the darkly glamorous stars of the time, of how I saw myself in my dreams.

Bowie led me to Lindsay and Lindsay led me to Jean Genet. Lindsay was performing Flowers, based on the book Our Lady of The Flowers by Genet, playing Divine. I found the book in a second hand bookshop in Southport, of all places. I devoured it, I understood its characters, I felt I was one of its characters. It was simply the best book I’d ever read (I’d certainly never read a book like it). It was another world.

Lindsay apparently took Bowie to see Jacques Brel is Alive and well and Living in Paris which ignited Bowie’s interest in Brel and as Bowie turned me on to Brel, Lindsay was indirectly responsible for that too.

The unholy trinity of Bowie, Lindsay and Genet was intoxicating. I had unlocked the doorway. Soon after, I left Southport for Leeds Polytechnic Fine Art Department. Once at Art College, I wrote and performed multimedia experimental shows, performance art, cabarets and plays inspired by Genet and Lindsay. Out of that grew the beginnings of what would become Soft Cell.

After college I left for Soho. So began my journey.

Marc Almond May 17th 2016.

38 Archive Tales

Biographies 39

Zazou Marc worked with Jeff Nuttall at Leeds Polytechnic on his early performance work. During his time at Art College, he did a series of performance theatre pieces: Zazou, Glamour in Squalor, Twilights and Lowlifes, as well as Andy Warhol inspired mini-movies. Zazou was reviewed by The Yorkshire Evening Post and described as “one of the most nihilistic depressing pieces that I have ever had the misfortune to see”, prompting Marc to later refer to it as a “success” in his autobiography.

Above left and right: photographs by Jamie Mcleod Below right: from Marc’s Art College show Zazou/Glamour in Squalor 1978 Facing page above: from Marc’s Art College show Zazou/Glamour in Squalor 1978 Facing page below: photograph by Mike Owen

40 Archive Tales

A Special Fan Palma de Majorca was the next stop for Flowers after its incredible post-Francoist success in Barcelona near the end of 1977. Joan Mirò came to the show, was thrilled, and sent a message inviting me to lunch next day. I couldn’t believe it. He was gentle and twinkling. His home was simple but full of colour, stone, folk art, childlike and archaic. We communicated mostly with gestures, eyes and laughter. His wife Pilar served a simple lunch, and then he took us into his studio. It was crammed with hundreds of objects and sketches and paintings of all sizes, in a jumble of energy and colour. This, I realised, was the perfect way to see his work, not labelled precisely on gallery walls but miscellaneously scattered, free, unfinished, uncatalogued, unfettered. I did an impromptu dance, my fan painting shapes in the air. So he promised to paint a dancing fan for me. It was brought to me in my dressing room the next day. A miracle.

Mirò later arranged for me to have a large exhibition of my paintings and drawings, mixed with installations and performance happenings by myself and my company, at the wonderful Mirò Foundation Museum in Barcelona.

By Lindsay Kemp

Biographies 41

Left: Kemp visiting Joan Miró in his studio in Palma de Majorca on 2 January 1978.

Right: Kate Bush and Kemp on the set of Kate’s film The Line, The Cross & The Curve, Black Island Studios, London, July 1993. Photo by Guido Harari.

Below: Kemp and Marcel Marceau backstage at Sadler’s Wells in the 1980s.

Circled: Lindsay Kemp and close friend Rudolf Nureyev.

42 Archive Tales

Happy Birthday Lindsay It was May 3rd 1974, Lindsay Kemp’s birthday. I’d seen Flowers many times and wanted to meet Lindsay, so I came up with the idea of having a cake made, with the cover poster of Flowers, in icing on top.

In those days this was unusual. The cake was delivered backstage and, after the show, I’d summoned up my courage, went to Lindsay’s dressing room and there he was, sitting with his mother, Marie. They

his home in Battersea, a place filled with theatrical props, Grand Opera blaring from old gramophones, the air thick with “mysterious concoctions”. And of course Lindsay often wearing a kimono, playfully scooping up adornments, performing for me his new creations.

I recall that one of the house residents was Sally the snake, a “reptile thespian” from his Salome show. Sally suddenly departed the company, and also her life, not so much with a hissy-fit but more with an abrupt croak. I often wondered if it was the potatoes that Lindsay kept encouraging her to eat rather than mice?

In place of potatoes, I’m delighted to offer everyone a fond re-creation of that famous cake, now specially made by Gerhard Jenne, of Konditor and Cook.

By Devon Buchanon

Left: Photo by Nina Manandhar, June 2015. Below: Photo

by Richard Haughton, May 2016. Facing: ‘Lindsay Kemp and boa constrictor’. By kind permission of Getty Images Hulton Archives. Photo by Frank Barratt at The Roundhouse London, February 17th 1977.

had a very special relationship. Instantly he knew who I was and he said “at last you came to see me!” He wrapped me in his arms, leaving me covered with much of his white makeup, fabulous glitter and fake blood! Marie was thrilled about that cake. She was known to be protective of Lindsay’s privacy, and so I was honoured that she often wrote to me, sharing anecdotes about Lindsay’s life.

The cake was a frequent talking point.

Marie even had a photo of it placed in her local Bradford bakery. Lindsay and I became great friends and I’d often visit

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44 Biographies

‘Lindsay Kemp is a great, repeat great artist.’

Sir Alec Guinness