Challenge is intrinsic to artistic creation, but David Bintley relishes it so much that he specializes in conceiving the unlikely.
"I like to do things that people think are impossible in dance," the English choreographer said in a recent interview with The Japan Times before his final production as the artistic director for dance at the New National Theatre, Tokyo (NNTT), after a four-year appointment. Then he added: "I particularly like taking things you wouldn't imagine you can do in dance."
From setting a full-length ballet in a shoe shop ("Hobson's Choice," 1989) to recreating the intricacies of kinaesthetic motion in Olympic sport ("Faster," 2012), and from the cafe musings of endangered species ("Still Life at the Penguin Cafe," 1988) to the sensuously pious world of medieval monks ("Carmina Burana," 1995), Bintley's works have been marked by his charismatic "creativity in the classical mode."
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