Difficult Recovery In Clark's `Fall'.

THE MICHAEL CLARK COMPANY SADLER'S WELLS THEATRE LONDON, ENGLAND OCTOBER 25, 2001

The two-fingered salute on the program cover for Before and After: The Fall was the first indication that the so-called "bad boy of ballet" was back. The second was the buzz from the mixed crowd filling the auditorium of Sadler's Wells, which saw its largest audience ever (1,802) on opening night. And then the evening began, and onstage, the spotlight fell on a pair of bare buttocks. Michael Clark had returned, and was once again aiming to titillate and shock.

Considered by many in the mid-'80s as the greatest dancer of his generation, the Scottish-born Clark, now 39, packed theaters with his punky, physically demanding and often visually vulgar productions. He and his dancers referenced drugs and sex; they wore outlandish costumes that regularly bared body parts, sported gigantic rubber dildos or breasts, and showed explicit sexual activity in their dancing. Clark himself, with his trademark shaved head, went one step further and enacted sex performances with fellow choreographer Stephen Petronio. His activities, while acclaimed by the younger generation, elicited disgust and horror from more staid dancegoers.

However, most agreed that decorations and themes aside, the onetime golden boy of The Royal Ballet School who, upon graduation, rejected a traditional Royal Ballet career in favor of the more modern Ballet Rambert, possessed genuine choreographic talent, one based on a classicism stripped of stuffiness. His rise to fame was meteoric but his personal life was damaged by wild extracurricular activities and he became addicted to heroin. By 1988, he was so dependent on it that he could no longer perform. He attempted to get clean, and in the early '90s created two works, but relapsed and had to turn down commissions, including one from his former family at The Royal Ballet, scheduled for 1994. He returned to Scotland, where, thanks to his mother's help, he overcame his addiction. Four years later he created a successful work called current/SEE.

His recent production, commissioned for London's Dance Umbrella Festival and financed and co-produced by a vast array of supporters from England, Berlin, Rome, and Paris, referred to Clark's addiction and recovery, as well as to the rock band The Fall, whose music he used. The first half of Before and After: The Fall recycled fragments from his early works, with all their accoutrements; the second, called "Rise," used the symbolism of masturbation to push home the point. In this work, Clark's five female dancers performed gymnastics with bars of fluorescent lighting, using them suggestively between their legs. A large film screen showed the back view of a man obviously intent on self-gratification as a timer ticked away (over six minutes of it!). The women, in oversized men's briefs, later danced with prosthetic arms with which they rubbed themselves. But then came the piece de resistance--four stagehands wheeled out a gigantic sculptured arm on a hydraulic lift, created by British artist Sarah Lucas, which, (you guessed it!) rose majestically, and then rhythmically moved up and down as the women danced around it, individually stopping to stand still within its cupped hand.

Despite the distractions, Clark's actual choreography showed some beautiful ideas and elegant, fluid movement. He emphasized classical technique--its deportment, strong legs, and graceful arms--but these poses transgressed rapidly to Clark's more avant-garde trademarks, like off-center arms, stuck-out bottoms, and crouching balances. The five dancers--Kerry Biggin, Lisa Dinnington, Melissa Hetherington, Victoria Insole, and Lorena Randi--were excellent exponents of his style, taut and neat with seemingly endless energy. Clark appeared only briefly onstage in both works, showing he still possesses mesmerizing grace and panache.

But times have changed since he first made his mark, and his specific focus on life is now more commonly evidenced in the arts. Gone is the '80s ability to shock, and much of the evening's work looked puerile. Even the music wasn't the ear-blasting, mind-numbing type of the past. There was a polite amount of tittering over the film screen and the arm, but Clark needs now to build on his unique talent for breaking choreographic boundaries rather than on sex if he is to retain his reputation as a revolutionary creator.