Memorandum submitted by Siobhan Davies
CBE
I welcome the Select Committee's Inquiry into
Dance.
This is an opportunity to recognize the extraordinary
growth of contemporary dance in this country over the past fifty
years. I was one of the first British trained dancers to perform
in the first performances by London Contemporary Dance Theatre
in 1967 and this particular form of dance is incredibly important
to me.
In a society where the word is easily manipulated,
the language of the body gives us a new vocabulary to deal with
contemporary emotions and ideas. One of this art form's strengths
is that it is a natural collaborator with music, design, and the
visual arts and this has had further influence on the development
of theatre, opera, television and new technology.
I started my company in 1988 and have received
Arts Council funding since that time. This investment has produced
over twenty works and has commissioned work from numerous collaborating
artists as well as employing my renowned company of dancers. We
have regularly toured and presented our work throughout the UK
and we have represented Britain at international festivals and
theatres. My work has been studied at both GCSE and A-level, and
has been recorded on video as well as for broadcast on television.
A dancer's career can often be precarious and
recently I have begun to focus on ways in which my company can
help to sustain a dance artist's career development. I have been
proud to establish a structured professional development programme
in partnership with the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. This is
a model that we have begun to develop internationally as well
as here in the UK.
All of this work is soon to be housed as part
of a brave new project assisted by funds from Arts Council Lottery
and the Elephant Links SRB budget. It is extraordinary that such
a large venture has been managed by a small independent dance
company. New partnerships have been forged between my company
and the London borough of Southwark to establish an inner city
project that will place contemporary dance as part of a far-reaching
cultural strategy for the borough. For the first time in its history
my company will have the necessary resources to make, develop
and present contemporary work of the highest quality. A joint
commitment from my company and the Arts Council has produced this
remarkable achievement. But we are not alone. The UK now has a
solid dance infrastructure of which we should be proud. There
is now a very rich seam of organisations and individuals, each
one able to make a particular contribution to the development
of dance in both education and the arts. As we progress, and more
is asked of us, we need to strengthen ourselves and we must continue
to examine our profession with rigour. We must improve training
provision at every level of the profession—for dancers and
their managers, we must professionally record, distribute and
archive our increasing body of work, levels of pay must be reviewed
and improved, outreach and education programmes should be further
developed, marketing must adapt to respond to the ever more competitive
climate and, most important of all, artists must be nurtured—they
are the life blood behind all this growth and without their sustained
development the commitment and energy will sap and some of the
investment will be lost.
I therefore wish to strongly support the case
for additional funding for Dance in the next Spending Review.
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