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Step-by-step guide to dance: Richard Alston

Source: The Guardian

Nov 02, 2009

Summary

British choreographer Richard Alston has leapt from hippy rebel to member of the modern dance establishment with impressive ease, writes Sanjoy Roy

In short

Initially a drop-out, then a rebel, Richard Alston has become part of the modern dance establishment. He was only ever interested in doing his own thing: developing a dance language and conversing with music.

Backstory

Born in 1948, Richard Alston was educated at Eton, but – true to the spirit of the 60s – dropped out at 16 to go to art college. A year later, inspired by a Royal Ballet performance (Frederick Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardée), he decided that he would become a choreographer. Fortuitously, the Contemporary Dance Trust – forerunner of London Contemporary Dance Theatre (LCDT) and School – was founded at almost exactly the same time, and Alston began classes there.

He began choreographing straight away. His formalist focus, which gained impetus after he and fellow student Siobhan Davies went to see the Merce Cunningham company in France, was very different to the theatrical style that LCDT was developi

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