Chris Channing

Is a performance artist, a mime, an actor and a director. He comes from the north of England but is now based in northern Italy. He has worked for more than 25 years in the Entertainment Industry.

As an entertainer and ‘metteur en scene’ at least three quarters of his work is as performance artist, the rest is theatre and concert work peppered with time in the recording studio. He is eclectic in style and taste moving easily between stylised theatricality, lush ‘kitscherie’ and a kind of bare anti•aesthetic producing performances with a strong visual impact.

He is the only performance artist in Europe to specialise in Tableaux Vivants or Living Paintings… his living versions of fine art portraits are created entirely by him, from scratch.

Corporate and private clients include the United Nations, Rolex, BMW, Selfridges and Samsonite as well as work at the Milan fashion weeks. He regularly makes performances for book launches and gallery and exhibition openings.

On television as a guest performer and sometime presenter he is usually seen in the guise for which he is best known in Italy: his ‘Living Paintings’ or ‘Quadri Vivi’.

In Paris, where he lived and worked before moving to Italy, he conceived and staged numbers for himself and other artists working in revue and restaurant cabarets such as Chez Madame Arthur, Piano Dans la Cuisine, and La Scaramouch. He collaborated with the late entertainer and designer Philippe Planquois, artistic director at Chez Madame Arthur, on the direction and staging of Planquois' own act and numbers.

Direction, design and choreography of his own theatre shows includes:

‘Something like a Life’ / ‘Sembra Una Vita’ (contemporary dance theatre) (2004),

‘Rubbish Sweet Rubbish’ / ‘Dolce Stoltezze’ (eccentric dance and vaudeville) (2006)

‘Monna Lisa in Delirium Totus …

The Creation, The Fame, The Descent and The Re•Birth of a Monster’(2008) Comedy theatre using masks and puppets. 7 chapters including ‘home sweet home’, ‘stardom’. ‘the nightmare’, ‘the can•can of death’ with references including Frankenstein, del Toro, Kubrick, Michelangelo, Munch, Warhol and Disney.

Direction, design and choreography of shows in which he does not appear include:

‘Shadows in the Soul’ / Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’. (2005) A promenade show in the derelict cathedral of San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna) staged every night at midnight from Christmas eve to New Year

‘I Remember Me’ / ‘MiRicordandoMi’ (2008) a one person acrobatic dance show for Padua artist Patriza Marcato based on the work of variety star Victoria MaBel.}

‘Healing Hearts’ (2003) Romeo, a chorus of pregnant nurses and his psychiatrist, Juliet ‘in a mental hospital for the sexually disturbed. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet set alongside 12th and 13th century ‘vulgar’ Italian poetry.

Poulenc’s ‘Babar, The Little Elephant’ with Alessandro Bergonzoni as narrator.

‘Horizontal Heroines. Sleep, Death and Madness in Opera, Poetry, Music and Popular Song’, Recital for voice, accordion and piano with Denise Leigh and Stefan Andrusyshyn. (2008 – Dada Fest at Liverpool City of Culture).

Formation:

He studied improvisation and physical theatre in the early 90’s with Jacques Lecoq at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris then Melodrama, Bouffons, Clown, and various other disciplines with Philippe Gaulier at his school in London. He was part of a two month workshop • selected from over 2000 auditionees • with Ariane Mnouchkine at the Theatre du Soleil in Paris. Before all this, from the ages of 13 to 18, he studied dance of various styles, dance history and anatomy at the Royal Ballet School in London;

He made his professional debut with England's Northern Ballet Theatre with which company he later became a soloist.

He then worked in classical, modern and musical theatre in England and Scotland with directors including Alan Lyddiard, Clare Venables, Neil Murray, Tim Supple, Noreen Kershaw, Ian Forrest and Andrew McKinnon.