Sir Richard Alston, Leading Light of British Dance, Dies at 77

Sir Richard Alston, the choreographer who witnessed the birth of British contemporary dance and directed Britain's oldest dance company, has died at the age of 77.

Alston served as artistic director of Ballet Rambert from 1986 to 1992 and led his own Richard Alston Dance Company from 1994 until its forced closure in 2020. He received a knighthood in 2019.

His name became synonymous with deeply musical dance. He built works from carefully chosen scores: Johannes Brahms' piano music in Waltzes in Disorder and A Sudden Exit, Benjamin Britten's vocal works in Illuminations and Rejoice in the Lamb, and Steve Reich's minimalism in Roughcut. His dancers moved with energetic focus and elegant lyricism — fleet jumps, lilting curves — with the craft of choreography always visible.

Alston's career began in the experimental ferment of 1960s London. Educated at Eton College, he turned away from the business and politics paths of his contemporaries and went to art school, buying cheap seats to The Royal Ballet on the side. Dance became an obsession.

"I decided, this is what I want to do, put my pencil down and put on some tights and get moving," Alston told The Guardian in 2019.

When Martha Graham dancer Robert Cohan arrived in London in 1966 to teach at what became London Contemporary Dance School, Alston was among his first pupils. Choreographer Siobhan Davies, a contemporary, remembers Alston reading books while everyone else warmed up, and pointing out churches by the English Baroque architect Nicholas Hawksmoor on walks around London. "I could recognize then his interest in architecture, in space particularly, in sculpture, proportion, structure," Davies says.

Alston formed the company Strider in 1972. Its radical works looked to the American avant-garde, with Merce Cunningham a decisive influence. In the mid-1970s Alston traveled to New York City to study with Cunningham, and in 1976 he performed his UnAmerican Activities at the Cunningham company's Westbeth studios — with Cunningham in the audience. Davies danced in the piece. "Merce liked the piece," she remembers. "He congratulated us, which was unusual, apparently. Richard was cock-a-hoop!"

Frederick Ashton was the other foundational influence, visible in Alston's swift footwork and use of the back. "Ashton's use of music, and use of small steps, varying the volume, making a large grand gesture and then a small sliding thing, all these small phrases, that's home ground to me," Alston said in a 2004 interview with Dance Now. "It made me realise I couldn't pretend to be a sub-Cunningham."

Alston led Richard Alston and Dancers from 1978 to 1980, then formed Second Stride with Davies and Ian Spink in 1982, before joining Rambert as resident choreographer and later artistic director during a richly creative period. Across his career he also made works for the Royal Danish Ballet, Ballet Atlantique, Holland Dance Festival, Ballet Theatre Munich, Scottish Ballet, Phoenix Dance Theatre and Ballet Black.

In 2011 he began choreographing for New York Theatre Ballet, and its founder Diana Byer appointed him resident choreographer in 2020. She "fell in love immediately" on seeing his work. "It wasn't about acrobatics, it wasn't about showing off technique. It was about dancing. He had real movement vocabulary and knew how to use it in a way that spoke to the human condition," Byer says.

The dance world protested when funding troubles forced Alston's company to close in 2020. Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, Alston remained sanguine, savoring the response to the company's farewell tour. "The audience went wild…, which was exciting," he said. "I think it's partly because they're beginning to understand that we won't be here forever."

Beyond musicality and finely crafted choreography, colleagues will remember his warmth, gentle intelligence and curiosity — "his attention to people, his joy in other people," as Davies puts it. "He was hugely kind and wickedly funny." His decades of work with Rambert, Second Stride and New York Theatre Ballet ensure that his movement vocabulary remains in the bodies of dancers on both sides of the Atlantic.