Christopher Channing works in the arts.
– He is a free-lance ‘theatre-maker’ and artistic leader for theatres, events, art organisations and festivals.
– He was born in Lancashire, England.
– He has lived and worked in Britain, France and Italy.
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At 12, he went to The Royal Ballet School in London as a resident student.
As well as classical ballet he studied contemporary dance, American and British folk dancing, pas de deux and partnering, group work & corps de ballet, the history of dance, ballet and music.
He graduated aged 18.
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In Paris he studied physical-theatre and specialised theatre disciplines such as Directing & Devising, Mask, Shakespeare & Chekhov, Clown and Bouffon,
with Jacques Lecoq at L’Ecole Internationale de Theatre (on a full grant from ‘The Dancers Resettlement Fund’)
with Philippe Gaulier at his eponymous Ecole
… and with Arianne Mnouschkine at Theatre du Soleil.
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He has a qualification in applied psychotherapy: Diploma in Counselling Skills in the Development of Learning
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He has taught at Universities in London and Manchester and at theatre schools in London and Bologna.
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He was a soloist with Northern Ballet
and a freelance dancer in films and theatre with choreographers including Arlene Phillips, David Toguri, Gillian Greogory and Molly Malloy.
He was an actor, a choreographer and a designer in the UK at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, York Theatre Royal, Manchester Contact Theatre, Dundee Rep Theatre, Lancaster Literary Festival, Dada Festival Liverpool and The Manchester International Festival of Expressionism.
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In France he staged shows and numbers in typically Parisian theatre-restaurants and cabarets working in close collaboration with Philippe Planquois, the artistic director of the cabaret-theatre ‘Chez Madame Arthur’.
He was Master of Cerimonies at Pavarotti’s 70th Birthday Gala.
For 12 years he was Artistic Director of the ‘International Biennale of the Absurd’ creating performance and exhibition spaces in chapels, garages, parks, private houses etc, and commissioning or finding between 25 to 30 artists or companies working in dance, theatre, film, street work or fine art.
His work covers various fields:
– festival direction, devising and programming
– event collaboration and consulting
– stand alone projects for teams of dancers, actors and musicians using dance, physical-performance-art or commercial-performance.
He has taken performance teams to Africa (4 times), to Turkey (to the Italian Embassy), Dubai, Saudi, Malta, Spain, Austria, Croatia, France and Holland and all over Italy.
Clients in the public sector include:
Culture offices in Florence, San Marino, Trieste, Bologna (Museum of Modern Art), Bologna (Teatro Arena del Sole), Tuscany (Museo Benozzo Gozzoli), Emila Romagna (Poetry Festival), Ferrara (Crime Writing Festival), Trento (Dro de Sera Dance Festival), RAI television, Vienna Historical Museums (Ambras Castle, Insbruck), Croatia (Osijek Youth Development Festival), etc
Clients in the private sector include:
‘Responding to Climate Change’ (United Nations Climate Summit), ‘Grand Casino Monte Carlo’, ‘The Saudi Cup’, ‘Dubai Central Culture Office’, ‘Selfridges’, ‘Siemens’, ‘Rolex’, ‘PlanitSwiss, Lausanne‘ ‘Nteractive Events, London’, etc
“Chris Channing is one of the artists who manages best to blend the experiences of theatre, mime, music and visual arts.“ – Alberto Masoni. Curator and festival creator.“
“. . . tell your friends – we need to bring this thoroughly artistic and theatrical man to the world’s attention” – Dance Europe