Clark, Michael (b Aberdeen, 2 June 1962). British dancer, choreographer, and company director. He trained in traditional Scottish dance from the age of 4 and in ballet. Studied at the Royal Ballet School with Richard Glasstone (1975-9). In 1979 he joined Ballet Rambert, where he starred in important works by Richard Alston, but he left in 1981 to work as a freelance dancer with Ian Spink and Karole Armitage. He was resident choreographer at London's Riverside Studios (1983) and founded his own company in 1984. As a dancer he is admired for his startling grace, superb technique, and amazing control. His early works as a choreographer established his reputation as a flamboyant iconoclast, using props such as giant phalluses and assaulting his audience with ear-splitting rock music. For many years he enjoyed being branded the ‘enfant terrible’ of British dance. Works like I Am Curious Orange (mus. The Fall, 1988) evinced his desire to shock and his interest in overturning all the precepts of classical dance. In 1989 he and his lover, the US choreographer Stephen Petronio, shocked the public even further when they appeared together in bed in a London art gallery performing a fifteen-minute duet with an explicit sexual agenda. But his celebrity as the ‘punk prince of ballet’ always masked a considerable talent for making dances. In 1992 his Mmm, or Michael's Modern Masterpiece, with music by the Sex Pistols, Sondheim, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, revealed a choreographer of both power and poetry, as well as one still wedded to his provocative gimmicks. With O (1994), set to Stravinsky's Apollo, he produced his most spellbinding work. In 1998 he returned to the stage after a long absence with current/SEE, which revealed a fresh interest in the fundamentals of dance composition. Companies he has worked with include the Paris Opera Ballet, Scottish Ballet, London Festival Ballet, and Ballet Rambert. He danced the role of Caliban in Peter Greenaway's film Prospero's Books (1991). A list of his other works includes Drop Your Pearls and Hog it, Girl (1986), Swamp (mus. Bruce Gilbert, 1986), and No Fire Escape in Hell (1986). He has also collaborated regularly with the film-maker Charles Atlas.

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