AI Profile

Gregory Nash Artistic director, The Point
Well, today Gregory Nash is artistic director of The Point at Eastleigh. On Monday he will be executive director of the Young Vic in the kind of translation from regional local authority arts management to a national role that, until quite recently, was considered impossible.

He will be back at Eastleigh, though, in November for the opening of the latest development phase of The Point, the performance venue set in the old council offices of Eastleigh, the 19th century Hampshire railway town.

Nash has not only fulfilled the borough’s ambitions for The Point, he has changed them and created a unique cultural facility in the four years he has been there. The new building has a sprung floor studio with movable seating for 80, living accommodation for eight artists, a foyer, conference room, roof garden and outdoor cinema, designed by the Hampshire practice of Chaplin Farrant Wiltshire.

His move with 17 years as a dancer and choreographer in his background to the Young Vic, another modern phenomenon of a venue under the hand of David Lan, comes as a surprise to at least one section of the cultural community.

“No-one in theatre thought it was in any way weird” he says. “People in the dance world were very surprised because they assumed dance people can’t cross over, and there is a slight gleefulness that here’s a sign that they can actually get out of the dance ghetto”, something to which we will return.

Actually, Gregory Nash’s career has dodged between theatre and dance in a hitherto unconventional way. Born the son of emigrants – first from Ireland to England, then to Australia and finally back to England – he was brought up in Worthing where the then important Connaught Theatre had a powerful youth drama section, which he joined. An inspirational movement teacher helped the physically agile boy who was not interested in sport to find his way, “so I came to dance through theatre”.