HERE COMES a big retrospective of the work of Leigh Bowery at London’s Tate Modern. His cleavage to the art of dance and performance will, I hope, manifest as a seam.

Back in 1984 Leigh Bowery had designed and made costumes for the launch season of Michael Clark Company, amid which I was one of the dancers. Michael persuaded Leigh to join a conga line with us to end a suite of dances which was set to music by the new-wave band The Fall. Visible to many, Leigh spent the preamble seated in the wings, episodically imbibing amyl nitrate and cheering us on. A final burst of unrehearsed magic took them across the forefront of our stage and was spot-on. To be incongruous, jaunty, and dead right was clearly already a thing, though his presence in the building was unwieldy.

An ambitious film by Charles Atlas, Hail the New Puritan (1985) frames a day in the life of the choreographer/dancer Michael Clark. There we all are, enacting our specialist skills, and linking set-pieces with spoof urban activity. In an opening dream sequence and in a disco apotheosis Leigh is seen performing with fullness and exactitude. He also dominates an improvised scene that was shot in his Stepney Council flat. This Pinteresque vignette reveals the comedic potential of its combative protagonists, coaxed by the intuitively timed physical theatre of Bowery himself.