Lindsay Kemp

Lindsay Keith Kemp (3 May 1938 – 24 August 2018) was a British dancer, actor, teacher, mime artist, and choreographer. He was probably best known for his 1974 flagship production of Flowers, a mime and music show based on Jean Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers, in which he played the lead role of 'Divine'. Owing to its homosexual themes and perceived decadence, reviews were sometimes hostile, but it was widely considered a theatrical and sensory sensation, and it toured globally for many years. He was also a mentor to David Bowie and Kate Bush. Early life Kemp was born in Birkenhead, but grew up in South Shields, near Newcastle upon Tyne. His father, a seaman, was lost at sea in 1940. According to Kemp, he danced from early childhood: "I'd dance on the kitchen table to entertain the neighbours. I mean, it was a novelty in South Shields to see a little boy in full make-up dancing on pointe. Finally it got a bit too much for my mother, and she decided to send me to boarding school at the age of eight, hoping that it would knock some sense into me." Kemp's mother moved away from South Shields, and Kemp attended Bearwood College, near Wokingham, a school for the sons of merchant seamen. He and his mother later moved to Bradford, Yorkshire, where Kemp attended Bradford Art College before studying dance with Hilde Holger and mime with Marcel Marceau. In the 1950s, he did National Service in the RAF. In an interview with the BBC, he fondly remembered being shouted at for being unable to march properly due to his desire to dance. Dance career Kemp played the Player Queen in the BBC's Shakespeare Quatercentenary production Hamlet at Elsinore (recorded at Elsinore castle) in 1963, which starred Christopher Plummer. He formed his own dance company in the early sixties and first attracted attention with an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968 with Flowers based on Jean Genet's Notre Dame des Fleurs (Our Lady of the Flowers). Its extraordinary dream-like opening scene of prisoners masturbating in their cells, while the silhouette of a beautiful male angel walked slowly across the stage, his wings reaching almost to the top of the proscenium, established the tone.