Nash snaps reveal dance history

Scanning down the list of dancers featured in this timely set of greatest snaps by peerless dance photographer Chris Nash is to gaze upon a Who?s Who of new British dance over the past two decades.

Anyone who is anyone has been given a career leg-up by one of Nash?s finely crafted choreographed studies.

Just as groups such as The Cholmondeleys, DV8 and Adventures In Motion Pictures tore up the rule book and created a whole new way of looking at dance in the mid-1980s, so Nash responded in kind with a whole new kind of dance photo. Pitched somewhere between a pop promo and a high fashion art shoot, Nash?s pictures played an integral part in making dance look daring, glamorous and dangerously beautiful. In a word, he made it cool.

Stylish without being stylised, Nash?s pop culture-influenced approach ? he?s also done the Pet Shop Boys, Jamiroquai and, er, Bros but we won?t dwell on that ? was in large part responsible for creating the striking images that helped the likes of Michael Clark, Javier de Frutos (pictured) and V-Tol cross over from the dance ghetto to find audiences in the wide world beyond.

It helps that Nash himself is a dance fan, a regular on the London dance scene. Though fashion and pop play an equal part in his portfolio, it?s Nash?s insider insight that informs his dance studies. There?s the twinkle in Matthew Bourne?s eye in Spitfire from 1987 (was he already dreaming of Swan Lake?), the electric chemistry of Lloyd Newson and Nigel Charnock in DV8?s seminal My Sex, Our Dance from 1986. Nash, with the luck created by judgment, was always there when it mattered. And what he?s created is a remarkable body of work.

Stop Motion: Twenty Years of Dance Photography by Chris Nash. Until Oct 27, Lyttelton Exhibition Foyer, National Theatre, South Bank SE1, 10am to 11pm, free. Tel: 020 7452 3000.