Lindsay Kemp (1938–2018). British dancer, mime artist, director, choreographer and teacher

Lindsay Kemp trained in dance at local schools in Birkenhead but failed to obtain a place at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School, studying instead at Bradford Art College. He gained a scholarship to join the Ballet Rambert School, but first had to do his National Service. Kemp later studied with Hilde Holger and Marcel Marceau, and himself gave dance classes at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden.

In 1968, Kemp created one of his most famous works, Flowers, a stylised extravaganza based on Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers. It met with disapproval from the dance establishment, but its openly gay theme added to its notoriety at the time, and the production toured to London, the United States of America and Australia. Kemp’s love of fusing multiple styles of dance and theatre into his productions – including mime, ballet, Spanish dance and Kabuki – continued to receive hostility from some but shows such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Onnagata were to prove highly popular with audiences. In the 1970s Kemp also worked with Christopher Bruce on productions of The Parades Gone By and Cruel Garden for Ballet Rambert, and he also appeared in the Derek Jarman films, Sebastiane and Jubilee. His pupils included the pop stars David Bowie and Kate Bush. Lindsay Kemp died in 2018.