Creative Movement Director

STEPHEN GALLOWAY Creative Movement Director Represented by About Stephen Stephen Galloway is the go-to choreographer and creative consultant for the world’s most progressive image-makers and brands. Though best known for his stellar 25-year career in ballet and dance theatre, he has worked across many related fields, from costume design and musical performance to fashion photography, magazine publishing and brand consultancy. Galloway has acted as creative advisor to the Rolling Stones for the past 15 years. Leaving Erie, Pennsylvania for Germany in the mid-1980s, Galloway became principal dancer with choreographer William Forsythe’s esteemed Ballett Frankfurt; perhaps the most progressive classical theatre group of the period. While Galloway remained at the company until 2004, he also collaborated as a choreographer and a performer with many of the other leading companies and esteemed directors of the day. These include Christian Moeller, Jan Lauwers of Needcompany and Jan Fabre. A voracious consumer of magazine imagery, Galloway’s vast sartorial knowledge led to him being appointed the Ballett Frankfurt’s head costume designer and style coordinator in 2000. His ability to invigorate a company’s signature aesthetic soon led to Galloway’s designs being featured in productions by other international companies including the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, American Ballet Theater, the Paris Opera, La Scala Opera in Milan, Scottish Ballet and Finnish National Ballet. Galloway’s rare command of both performance and aesthetics has meant he is highly celebrated in the fashion world. He has staged fashion shows for the industry’s foremost design houses, including Yves Saint Laurent, Costume National, Versace and Issey Miyake, for which Galloway worked as creative director from 1993–97. His longstanding collaboration with fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin has produced some of the most innovative editorial imagery of the past two decades – published in leading magazines Paris Vogue, US Vogue, V and W – in addition to prestigious advertising campaigns for luxury brands YSL, Calvin Klein and Gucci. The recent proliferation of fashion film has meant Galloway is much in demand to choreograph motion image sequences; he contributed to behind the scenes films for Gucci’s fall/winter ‘08–09 and ‘09–’10 campaigns. Galloway has also consulted to a range of luxury brands including Mercedes Benz and Saab, as well as editing the quarterly magazine BRAVE! Galloway has enjoyed considerable success as a musician, releasing two albums, From This Day On (2002) and The Return of Lubrious (2009). He was invited to act as creative consultant to Mick Jagger in 1997, and has worked intimately with the Rolling Stones ever since. Under a myriad of job titles – from ‘choreographic concert consultant’, ‘movement director’ and ‘stage choreographer’ to ‘movement consultant’ or ‘hips and lips director’ – he has consulted on all aspects of the band’s creativity. This includes all their videos, TV appearances and concerts, including the epic Bridges of Babylon and Bigger Bang tours, during which Galloway collaborated with Martin Scorsese on his 2008 documentary Shine A Light. Skrebneski for the album Baby, It’s Me, in which the shoulder. Thus the image captures a moment that is thoroughbred athleticism, or persuade a near-naked singer poses with her back to the camera, dressed in a technically static — with no actual move ment shown or Rihanna to abandon herself in a quasi-feline solo slinky metallic gown. suggested — yet conjures the impression that the human romp. As Galloway describes in a recent shoot with the figure at its center is about to turn. barbadian singer, the process involves equal measures of She looks up at the light above her, a potent blast of disco discipline and play. firmament that bathes her divine silhouette. Galloway The work’s power lies in that conceit, a game of nuance cannot tear himself from his phone. He is checking the that Galloway has turned into a job. “It was a physical dialogue, a tango of sorts. Rihanna is status of a print he is trying to buy of the iconic black- very smart and understood that it was about us getting and-white picture. Apart from the glamour it oozes, for THE “MAGIC” confused in each other – not really knowing who is Galloway, the picture captures the optimism of an era. leading and who is following. I like it that way. It keeps In 2002, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin me honest.” THE CREATIVE CLASS “I find myself referencing the 70s a lot, and trying to invited Galloway, who was then at the peak of his dance figure out why that is. I think the music was good, and career, to collaborate with them on an assignment for Dubbed “The Model Whisperer” by The Wall Street Stephen Galloway’s Magic Touch there was a certain freedom. People were curious. There Calvin Klein in New York. The brand had enlisted the Journal, Galloway invariably delivers the moments of was still the idea of the future. We are so confronted Dutch photographer couple — along with the graphic engineered serendipity that every photographer is after. Courtesy of 032c, BoF brings you an exclusive with the immediacy of the present now that people design studio M/M — to reinvigorate its image with While working with a subject can involve him actively profile on Stephen Galloway, a ‘creative movement don’t think about the future anymore. We’ve lost the a fresh advertising campaign featuring model Jessica demonstrating moves and positioning body parts, director’ who guides models on how to move and excitement of, ‘What I can become?’ Or, ‘What is still to Miller. Galloway’s guidance sometimes occurs in a mysterious pose, delivering moments of engineered serendipity. come in my life?’ Or, ‘Yeah, this is great, but wait till the language of nods, looks, or other minute gestures. 90s are here!’” For the task, van Lamsweerde and Matadin asked Galloway to create “a whole new physical language, a However, in every case, there is a moment when a silent One of the six tattoos on Galloway’s body spells the word new vocabulary of movement and fashion positioning.” rapport grows between Galloway and the person being HOPE, and the anticipation of a new, sexier tomorrow photographed. Trust and an environment of minimal has not failed to inform his own trajectory. As a six- It marked the beginning of Galloway’s second career — self-consciousness are requisite ingredients for his work. foot-four teenager, he left Erie, Pennsylvania for the or third, or fourth, depending on what how one counts. The reason why a growing number of top brands think industrious midlands of Germany, where he arrived in Since 1997, he has been a special consultant to the that some of the best-paid photographers, models, 1986 as ballet Frankfurt’s youngest principal dancer. Rolling Stones, advising Mick Jagger and his bandmates and actresses on the planet could still benefit from the on how to move on stage. He has also designed costumes presence of a self-described “giant black guy standing in For almost two decades, Galloway was the star of what for opera and ballet productions around the world. the corner,” can only be explained in terms of the unique became — under the visionary choreographer William vantage point Galloway brings to a shoot. Forsythe — the most progressive classical dance Galloway had already been involved with fashion, art company in the world. But even before Ballet Frankfurt’s directing shows and special projects for a number of “Of course a photographer knows all the possible final performance in 2004, Galloway had started to carve design houses, most notably for Issey Miyake in the 90s, placements for a set of hands. But I see things out parallel careers straddling fashion, music, and visual but it is the specific vocation that began with the Calvin differently. I see the negative space around it, and I culture. Klein job that today occupies the bulk of his time and always see things in motion.” provides him with the most satisfaction. There’s another fact that helps explain why Galloway According to Galloway — aside from his people skills, loves the Diana Ross photo so much. It’s all sinuous Neither choreographer nor coach, Galloway refers focus, and intuition — the answer lies in his gift for line. And, more importantly, it’s all back — a body part to what he does as “creative movement direction.” In improvisation, which is a direct result of his years with that happens to interest Galloway more than any other addition to his work with van Lamsweerde and Matadin, ballet Frankfurt. physical feature (except for, perhaps, an elongated neck). he has worked with other leading fashion photographers and for an array of fashion magazines and labels. “It was like being in a laboratory with some of the “For me it’s all about the back of a shoulder, or the greatest scientists in the dance world, the most gifted underpart of a neck. And I am always super concerned “I bring a three-dimensional, sometimes four- dancers of a generation. And it influences everything with the back.” dimensional, roundness to a flat image. It’s about I do today. I was raised to walk into a room and do a making a person move, even if they are standing still.” dance with whatever I found. That’s how we worked, Galloway’s anatomic infatuation is key to the special always looking at what’s around, underneath and on niche that he has now come to occupy within the Put in more tangible terms, Galloway instructs top of what you see, never taking anything at face value, competitive world of high-end image-making.

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