David Bintley and Still Life at the Penguin Cafe

FONTS

David Bintley and Still Life at the Penguin Cafe

Major Works

David then found David Day's 'The Doomsday Book of Animals,' and came across a paragraph describing the senseless loss, by two Icelandic fishermen, of the last mating pair of Great Auks and their single egg. This text, along with the stereotypical images of the biblical flood and Noah's Ark (shown in the imagery at the end of the peice), helped to shape David's ideas into what was to become the first ever dance peice to examine the issue of extinction and humanities responsibility to protect and preserve global diversity, not only in relation to animals but also of thier cultures and lifestyles, and our cultures and lifestyles.

A list of some of his choreographed works:

• Still Life at the Penguin Cafe (1988)
• Hobson's Choice (1989)
• Edward II (1995)
• Carmina Burana (1995)
• Cyrano (2007)
• E=mc2 (2009)
• Cinderella (2010)

His Career

In 1976, Bintley was offered a contract to dance with the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, which is known today as the Birmingham Royal Ballet. He received his first task as a choreographer in 1978, creating the ballet 'The Outsider'. Later in 1985, he was appointed resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in Convent Garden. After a while, he created numerous works for the Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and as an international guest choreographer. In 1995, he succeeded Sir Peter Wright as artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Each section in 'Still Life' has a distinctive movement identity and an appealing set of 'personality' traits, all rooted in the choreography. David set out first to capture the character of how each animal moves and is recognized, which has inspired him: so the Penguin waddles and flaps her wings uselessly, the Flea springs about and causes chaos, the Zebra walks, stoops and poses and the Rat twitches and scampers. From this starting point, David linked each animal with a related dance genre and location from around the globe: so the springiness of the flea is joined into an English Morris Dance, the cheeky liveliness of the Monkey is danced as a Latin American street carnival.

Influences for Still Life

David's initial inspiration for the ballet came from the highly unusual music of Simon Jeffes Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the album sleeve illustrations created by Emily Young. The first thing that caught David's eye was the strangeness of the naked creatures - part human, part penguin and the surreal cafe setting, this can be seen in each scene such as - the ram has a mask on a human body.

'It was a unique kind of world and I was fascinated by the combination of 'world music' and the philosophical idea of the Penguin Cafe being an escape from the real world... a parallel universe.'

inspirations seen in his work

we can see elements of The Doomsday Book Of Animals, we see this clearly in performance as the piece begins with Jeremy Irons speaking about the extintion of animals for the aural setting (beginning only). we can also see this in the choice of extinct animals.