Lindsay Kemp
Birthday: 1938-05-03 Place of Birth: South Shields, England, UK
Synopsis
Lindsay Kemp was an English dancer, actor, teacher, mime artist, and choreographer. He collaborated with David Bowie as he invented theatrical personas such as Ziggy Stardust and taught Kate Bush how to dance. He starred in The Wicker Man and collaborated on films with auteurs like Ken Russell and Derek Jarman.
Acting
David Bowie: Finding Fame
Coming 50 years after the release of Space Oddity, the 90-minute film explores the Bowie before Ziggy Stardust, following the period from 1966 when he changed his name from David Jones to Bowie. It includes footage from the BBC Archives including footage of a BBC audition in 1965 of David Bowie and the Lower Third, which included a performance of Chim-Chim-Cheree and Baby That's A Promise.
The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill
This documentary explores Kate Bush's career and music, from January 1978's Wuthering Heights to her 2011 album 50 Words for Snow, through the testimony of some of her key collaborators and those she has inspired.
The Wicker Man
Police sergeant Neil Howie is called to an island village in search of a missing girl whom the locals claim never existed. Stranger still, however, are the rituals that take place there.
The Line, the Cross & the Curve
A singer struggles to dance well in rehearsal with her band. A power outage leaves her alone in the studio, reviewing her life, when a mysterious woman appears through the mirror and gives her a pair of Red Shoes. The cursed shoes dance beautifully, but endlessly. The singer is drawn irresistibly into the fey world beyond the mirror, where she must redeem three magic symbols from the mysterious woman in order to obtain release from the cursed shoes.
Savage Messiah
In the Paris of the 1910s, brash young sculptor Henri Gaudier begins a creative partnership with an older writer, Sophie Brzeska. Though the couple is 20 years apart in age, Gaudier finds that his untamed work is complemented by the older woman's cultural refinement. He then moves to London with Brzeska, where he falls in with a group of avant-garde artists. There, Gaudier encounters yet another artistic muse in passionate suffragette Gosh Boyle.
The Looking Glass Murders
Made for Scottish TV and airing in 1970, "The Looking Glass Murders" is a filmed version of the mime improv play "Pierrot in Turquoise", which Lindsay Kemp and David Bowie first staged in 1967. Pierrot is a freaky mime who ventures into a mirror where he falls in love and rolls around with the equally grotesque Columbine. But when Columbine spurs him for Harlequin, Pierrot's jealousy takes over and drives him to murder. Cloud, perched on a ladder, watches over the proceedings and narrates in song.
