Lindsay Kemp

Lindsay Keith Kemp (3 May 1938 – 24 August 2018) was a British dancer, actor, mime artist, choreographer, and teacher who brought his work to Broadway in 1974. Born in Birkenhead and raised in South Shields, near Newcastle upon Tyne, Kemp lost his father, a seaman, at sea in 1940. He attended Bearwood College, near Wokingham, a school for the sons of merchant seamen, before relocating with his mother to Bradford, Yorkshire. There he studied at Bradford Art College, trained in dance with Hilde Holger, and studied mime under Marcel Marceau. During the 1950s he completed National Service in the RAF.

Kemp established his own dance company in the early 1960s and first drew significant attention at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968 with Flowers, a mime and music production adapted from Jean Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers. The work, in which Kemp played the lead role of Divine, toured globally for many years. Its Broadway presentation came in 1974, for which Kemp served as both performer and book writer. Though reviews were at times hostile owing to the production's homosexual themes, Flowers was widely regarded as a theatrical and sensory landmark. An earlier television credit came in 1963, when Kemp played the Player Queen in the BBC's Shakespeare Quatercentenary production Hamlet at Elsinore, filmed at Elsinore Castle and starring Christopher Plummer.

His stage work encompassed a wide range of productions, among them Pierrot in Turquoise, Salome, Mr Punch's Pantomime, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Duende, Nijinsky, Alice, Cenerentola, Nijinsky il matto (1983), Façade, The Big Parade, Onnagata, Variété, and Dream Dances. For Ballet Rambert he choreographed Parades Gone By in 1975 and Cruel Garden in 1977, both with music by composer Carlos Miranda. Variété was later produced by Youth Music Theatre UK at the Riverside Studios in 2013, directed by Kinny Gardner.

During the early 1970s Kemp taught dance and mime, counting David Bowie, Kate Bush, and Vivian Stanshall among his students. He staged and performed in Bowie's Ziggy Stardust concerts at London's Rainbow Theatre in August 1972, alongside Jack Birkett, and appeared in the promotional video for Bowie's single "John, I'm Only Dancing," directed by Mick Rock. Bush wrote the song "Moving," featured on her debut album The Kick Inside, as a tribute to Kemp, and also contributed vocals to Zaine Griff's song "Flowers," likewise a tribute to him.

Kemp's film work included the role of pub landlord Alder MacGregor in The Wicker Man (1973), a dancer in Derek Jarman's Sebastiane (1976), a cabaret performer in Jarman's Jubilee (1977), a supporting role in the Kate Bush short film The Line, the Cross & the Curve (1994), and a pantomime dame in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine (1998). In opera, he produced Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Macerata in July 1995, Iris in Livorno in November 1998, and Die Zauberflöte in Jesi in November 1999. He returned to Livorno in November 2016 with a new production of Die Zauberflöte, for which he also designed the sets and costumes and co-lit the production.

From 2005 to 2012, Kemp performed the role of the fairy Carabosse in The Sleeping Beauty with the Italian company Balletto del Sud, under choreographer Fredy Franzutti. He also portrayed the magician Kashchei in that company's productions of The Firebird from 2007 to 2010. His last public performance in the United Kingdom was a collaboration with singer-songwriter Tim Arnold at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall in June 2018, a multimedia live arts installation of Arnold's song "What Love Would Want."

Kemp left England in 1979, settling first in Spain and later in Italy, where by 2002 he maintained homes in Rome and Todi. He died in Livorno, Italy, on 24 August 2018, at the age of 80.