The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Costume designer Sandy Powell remembers her friend and mentor, the choreographer Lindsay Kemp, who died last month
No one could tell a story like him: he’d regale us with them in detail – often embellished, but that only added to the charm
WORKING WITH LINDSAY Kemp was extraordinary, challenging and fabulous. This photo was taken during one of many costume fittings for his production Elizabeth’s Last Dance, performed in Spain in 2005. I’d designed the costumes for his tragic and ageing Queen, but had to nip over to Los Angeles during the rehearsals for the Academy Awards, because I’d been nominated for Best Costume Design for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. I came straight back with my Oscar, and then spent the rest of the week staying up all night glueing on sequins, just like the old days.
Like many others of my generation, I’d come across Lindsay through an obsession with David Bowie. I first saw Lindsay perform in Flowers atthe Roundhouse in London in the mid-’70s when I was a teenager. I was overwhelmed by the spectacle, which was more thrilling than anything I’d ever experienced, and I knew I wanted to be part of this world. Five years later, at the end of my second year at art school, Lindsay was teaching classes at the Pineapple Dance Centre in London, and I signed up immediately. He encouraged us to pretend to be a cherry blossom one minute and fall in love with our neighbour the next, so I was forced to lose all inhibition. The class ended with us all skipping around the room, can-can style, to Offenbach.
Exhilarated, I asked if I could show him some of my work and he invited me to tea. We instantly became friends. He promised me a job and I never returned to college.
Lindsay was a generous teacher. I learned more in my first job with him – three weeks working in Milan on his show Nijinsky – than in three years at art school. As an artist and designer he would communicate exactly what he wanted, yet give freedom to his collaborators to explore their own creativity. Thrown in at the deep end, I had to make most of the costumes myself. I learnt the art of dyeing them in hotel baths and ageing with a blow torch (to the detriment of many studio floors).
During the next few years, I went on to design more shows, and redesign and make costumes for many of the existing ones – including Flowers, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Mr Punch. Lindsay was just as much an entertainer offstage too. No one could tell a story like him, and he’d regale us with them in great detail – often embellished, but that only added to the charm. He also made me laugh more than anyone. Over the years, we got into scrapes that would leave us in hysterics. There was the time in Barcelona, after a night in an absinthe bar, when I was given the task of making excuses to his adored elderly mother, who never trusted me again, accusing me of leading her son astray. And the time we tried to cook Christmas dinner in his apartment in Livorno: the oven door wouldn’t close and we had to use gaffer tape and bungee straps.
For me, nothing will be as beautiful as the sight of his extraordinarily expressive face in a decreasing spotlight at the end of Flowers. Even in complete darkness, the image still remained. This was the moment that changed my life. Lindsay was the greatest friend and mentor, whose inspiration and influence has never diminished.