ABSTRACT
Richard Alston has a sophisticated awareness of the arts, finding the stimulus for his work from a wide range of subjects, and he creates dances that benefit from repeated viewing. Although he has choreographed dances with no sound accompaniment, music has become the starting point for the majority of his creations. He immerses himself in the sound and the structure of the score before moving into the studio. He creates all the movement himself; he does not ask his dancers to improvise, but he chooses his dancers for the qualities they will bring to the dance. Their input is, therefore, crucial to the production and consequently all his dance works have a humanity, which enriches their appeal for the audience. The range of music he uses brings variety to an evening of Alston’s well-crafted choreography that was described in The New York Times as evoking ‘the gentle lyricism of Frederick Ashton, the rhythmic intensity of Merce Cunningham and the keen musicality of Mark Morris’.1
