It was a scorching day in July and the air in Tokyo's concrete jungle was shimmering in the heat. But on a visit here prior to next month's opening of his voluptuous production "Elizabeth I: the Last Dance" at Theatre Cocoon, avant-garde performance-art icon Lindsay Kemp — a self-described "stranger in a strange land" back home in England — appeared quite at ease, as perhaps befits a longtime resident of the hotter climes of Italy and Spain.

With his sparkling, impish eyes, his lovely smile and expressive hand movements, this 70-year-old, sporting a light cotton jinbei summer kimono, immediately brought to vibrant life a cozy meeting room in a Shibuya gallery currently showing his art work, as he made his entrance.

Fresh from a stroll around the eclectic back streets of Shibuya, this multitalented man, who has told some interviewers that his birthplace is Birkenhead in northwest England but others that it is South Shields in the northeast, was soon talking of how he began taking ballet lessons at age 4, "Billy Elliot"-style, with the secret support of his mother and against the wishes of his father, a merchant sailor who was lost at sea in 1940.