English dancer, choreographer and teacher Lindsay Kemp was BOTD in 1938. Born in the Wirral, Merseyside and raised in South Shields, Tyneside, his father died when he was two, and he and his mother moved to Bradford in West Yorkshire. He took dancing lessons as a child, alarming his family sufficiently to be sent to a military boarding school. He survived the experience, gayer than ever, and studied at the Bradford College of Art, where he befriended David Hockney. After completing compulsory military service with the Royal Air Force, he studied dance at the Ballet Rambert school in London, before moving to Paris to study mime with Marcel Marceau. He formed the Lindsay Kemp Company in 1962 and became a popular performer and choreographer, with pieces inspired by Jean Genet‘s prison sex novel Our Lady of the Flowers, Oscar Wilde’s Salomé and the poetry of Federico García Lorca. Dance critics were unimpressed with his hybrid of mime, performance art and cabaret camp, but he attracted a devoted cult following, especially with LGBT audiences. In the 1960s, he became the teacher (and lover) of the young David Bowie, performing together in the dance pieces Flowers and Pierrot in Turquoise. Kemp became a major influence on Bowie’s performance style, helping stage the now-legendary Ziggy Stardust concerts in 1972. He also taught and mentored Kate Bush, helping develop the balletic style showcased in her music video for Wuthering Heights. He made vivid appearances in 1970s British independent films, including Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah, Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane and Jubilee and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man. In 1979, he relocated to Barcelona, returning to London in 1983 for a highly-praised dance piece based on the life of Vaslav Nijinsky. In later life, he settled in Italy, and made an entertaining cameo as a music hall dame in Todd Haynes‘ Glam Rock film Velvet Goldmine. He continued performing until his death in 2018, aged 80.