ABSTRACT
Ian Spink’s dance background was initially in classical ballet, and later influences have been, variously, Jaap Flier, Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and Mary Fulkerson. He has developed his choreographic work and style very much through the collaborative process, whether with dancers themselves in the rehearsal studio, or with designers, composers, and playwrights in the overall conception of a work. Spink is clearly a choreographer who likes to work with other artists and to develop ideas through these interchanges. Indeed, he has said that he considers him-self ‘a general manipulator of people’1 rather than a choreographer, and one who may move into the territory of movement, or, equally into the territory of text or music. Spink has also worked alongside other choreographers, for example Ashley Page in Escape at Sea (1993). His role, then, is often as much to do with the organization of material as with its generation, and his interest in forms and structures is reflected in this. The extent to which he successfully manipulates structures frequently determines the success of the work in question.
