Hit the rock with Michael Clark, Th, Part II

Here we are again! It is one year now when I collaborated as a non-dancer with Michael Clark Company. Today, with the premier show Th, Part II the scenario has change at Tate Modern. The setting of stage, seating, non-dancers, light, music, costume and choreography brings a reworked idea about alienation, the book 1984 written by George Owen, and the totalitarianism in which Michael Clark has been working on. The non-dancers are more or less the same as last year and majority of his conditionals professional dancers like Kate Coyne, Melissa Hetherington, Oxana Pancheko Harry Alexander, Benjamin Barvis and Simon Williams are still dancing in the company.

Michael Clark has created a 10-piece program set to songs by David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Pulp and Funkadelic. Music, choreography and light to create a show that has a lot of autobiographic. The professionals dancers dressed in Stevie Stewart's black and white all-in-ones, and later in black and silver were dancing and reproducing acrobatic steps, while Charles Atla's lighting pointing them out from the floor. This is the second experience to Michael Clark Company's public residency at Tate Modern. Last summer the public were able to watch the coreographic process by the bridge in the Turbine Hall.

His beginnings
Michael Clark (Aberdeen 1962) is dancing since he is four years old. He began with the traditional Scottish dancing. In 1975, he started his studies in the Royal Ballet School of London and in 1979 danced in Rambert Ballet. During this time, he joined a summer residency in Merce Cunningham Company and John Cage who led him to meet and work with Karole Armitage. Armitage has been also very important to Michael Clark, because he presented him Charles Atlas who has been collaborating with since them.

Michael Clark has been always recognized by his alternatives and radical projects. He dance, innovate, interpret, and create diverse atmospheres, surrealist and fantastical. He is experimenting, absorbing and creating since the 80’s. A time that really like and has been an important reference for his job. Punk scenario brought him the possibility to act as a team in the company of fashion designers, Body Map, artists Leigh Bowery, Trojan, recently Sara Lucas and Peter Doig, The Fall, Atlas, and including international top model Kate Moss.

In collaborations with his friends, he created 16 original pieces in 1984. By this time, he launched his first own Michael Clark Company with two projects; Do you Me? I did and New Puritan. The video Hail the New Puritan in collaboration with Charles Atlas was the beginning of his career into film and video. In 2001 has created with the visual artist Sara Lucas, Before and After The Fall. When in 2005 Michael Clark became an Artist Associate of the Barbican Center, London, embarked on a three years adventure called Stravinsky and in which his pieces O (1994) and Mmm...(1992) reworked for this project. With the final part of the trilogy by Igor Stravinsky, he presented I Do, The Stravinsky at the Lincoln Center, New York in 2009. Recently, the company has been on tour internationally with his latest Project, come been and gone to great critical acclaim.