Alston, Richard (b Stoughton, 30 Oct. 1948). British dancer, choreographer, and director. He gave up art college to study dance, entering the London School of Contemporary Dance in 1967. In 1970 he joined London Contemporary Dance Theatre and in the same year began to create works for the company. In 1972 he formed Strider, a small independent group performing works by him and other company members, and in 1975 he left for New York to study with Cunningham, returning to London in 1977 to form his own company. In 1980 he was made associate choreographer of Ballet Rambert and in 1982 he was co-founder of Second Stride, though he withdrew after two seasons. In 1986 he became Rambert's artistic director, and was responsible for changing the company's name to Rambert Dance Company and for shifting the repertoire from dramatic to more abstract dance, bringing in works from Cunningham, T. Brown, and Childs. He left in 1993 and a year later formed the Richard Alston Dance Company. Though his work is strongly influenced by Cunningham it has a lyricism (that partly derives from Ashton) and also a very individual responsiveness to music. He is renowned for using contemporary composers and/or painters in his work, such as Wildlife (mus. Nigel Osborne, des. Richard Smith, 1984), Soda Lake (des. Nigel Hall, 1981), Pulcinella (mus. Stravinsky, des. Howard Hodgkin, 1987), Hymnos (mus. Peter Maxwell Davies, 1988), and Bach Measures (mus. Harrison Birtwistle, 1996), though he has also set works to Mozart in Dealing with Shadows (1990), Rameau in Brisk Singing (1997), and Ravel in Shimmer (2003).