Examination of Witnesses (Questions 28-39)
11 MAY 2004
MR ANTHONY
BOWNE, MR
DEREK PURNELL,
MR WAYNE
MCGREGOR
AND MS
SIOBHAN DAVIES
Chairman: Good morning. We saw you were
listening to the previous group of witnesses, and no doubt you
will have learned from their experience! I will ask Mr Doran to
ask the first question.
Q28 Mr Doran: Welcome to our inquiry.
Can I start off with Mr Bowne. Laban has obviously been in the
news quite a lot recently and, in some respects, has helped to
raise the profile of dance quite considerably, certainly in south
east London. There is a huge investment—almost £25
million—which has gone into that. Can you say a little about
what benefits you expect to get from that?
Mr Bowne: That money came from
a variety of sources and for a variety of reasons. For example,
approximately £13 million came from the Arts Council; some
came from our original development agency, the London Development
Agency, and it came for a variety of reasons. In justifying it
we initially had to talk about hard outputs—what you get
for your money in terms of economics. In terms of economics we
provided so many man years of construction skills on the project.
As an organisation with a turnover of £4.5 million we employ
160 people. The students who graduate from professional training
at Laban gain employment as professional dancers and choreographers.
Our core funding from the Higher Education Funding Council to
train dancers requires that we get more than 75% of them into
employment as dancers and choreographers, which is a very high
percentage. Our recent statistics have shown that we are actually
in the high 80 and early 90% in that endeavour. Economically it
makes a lot of sense; but of course the reason that we exist is
because we believe in dance and the power of dance in society.
As well as the core business of training dancers, we have a very
vibrant education and community department in our organisation.
In terms of the work we do with the local community, at present
we have calculated we have over one thousand hits a week; so that
is a thousand people benefiting from the work of Laban in the
local community. We have a theatre in the heart of our building
which is purpose-designed for dance. There are quite a few differences
between a theatre designed for dance and the question earlier
about, is there a problem with spaces for dance, yes, there is.
Our space is well suited for it and it provides a performing space
for the nation and for the local community. In terms of our health
facility, we have a large dance health facility. We are very proud
that we are in many ways leading the field in education in dance/health
provision, and that health facility is open to the local community
as well as to dancers. Our library is again open to the public.
There is a whole host of things in addition to training professional
dancers that we can offer.
Q29 Mr Doran: In the future your funding
will come mainly from the higher education scheme that you mentioned,
grants and whatever you can raise at your box office?
Mr Bowne: Yes, this is one of
the major issues for Laban, for the organisation; in that we were
very successful with the help of our local authority, the Arts
Council, the London Development Agency and others to build this
fantastic facility. The only core funding we receive is for the
training of professional dancers through the Higher Education
Funding Council. The work of our theatre, the work of our community
unit, the work in our health area, is not revenue funded, and
that is a real issue for us; because covering those core costs
is getting increasingly difficult. We are hoping in the future,
by showing that we are a successful organisation, that we will
be able to develop revenue funding links with the organisations
that capital-funded us so that we can continue this work, but
it is a problem at the moment.
Q30 Mr Doran: That is basically the Arts
Council?
Mr Bowne: And the local authority.
The local authority, Lewisham, is a fantastic authority. They
are very much culture-led. They see how culture can lead regeneration
of an area, which in fact it has done in our area; but at the
moment they do not give us a penny towards our work. They contributed
to the building but not to the work of the organisation.
Q31 Mr Doran: But lobbying should take
you a little bit further forward. Siobhan Davies, as I understand
it, your company is aspiring to own its own building. That seems
to be a growing trend. I know the Ballet Rambert, for example,
are looking at the possibility of building their own studios and
theatre in south London. Could you say a little about the difficulties
you face and, first of all, about why you want to have your own
premises and how hard it is for people in your position?
Ms Davies: There was a moment
about 10 years ago, when I was rehearsing in a church hall, when
a television company were coming to film us to give us some publicity;
and when they arrived they saw the dancers in hats and gloves,
and there was cold air coming out of their mouths, and the television
company looked at me and said, "What are you doing?"
It is a story but it is imprinted through and through me like
Brighton rock. After that moment I could not waste a day in using
my position as a reasonably mature dancer and artist to try and
find a space that would empower my profession and the dancers
that I work with. I got started and the Lottery, luckily, turned
up. It took me a while even to get an entry point into the Lottery,
and then I did and I found a space within a primary school in
Southwark. The Lottery and the local Borough of Southwark have
helped us find the money, and we have found our contribution money
as well. It means we will have a base which is principally for
the profession. To some extent I think I am an eye of the needle
company, instead of a general company. I feel the best I can do
is help train extraordinary dancers and very good teachers. Then
the ripple effect—of them learning what they do and going
out to a wider community, inspiring people, inspiring other teachers
particularly in the local authority—is the crux of the whole
thing. The difficulty is, I am a small independent company and
not very large. Going to the Arts Council, which I have a good
relationship with, I had to prove myself unbelievably rigorously,
but I felt I was able to do that. To go to business partnerships,
trusts and funds if you are a small person, and initially cannot
even afford somebody to write the right kind of literature which
is really going to inspire somebody to give you money, why should
they give money to something which is so ephemeral, I did not
even have an address at that point. Now if I have a building,
I have an address; I have a certain kind of status; but, more
importantly, independent dance will have a status and then I think
we will be able to take far greater footsteps forward and encourage
far more people on that basis.
Q32 Mr Doran: Do you see a problem with
you choosing to base yourself in London? Do you think that will
inhibit the ability of the company to tour in the future? It is
a very crowded marketplace.
Ms Davies: I have not had a problem
touring up until now. I am hoping that this base gives us more
strength rather than less strength to tour. I am also quite interested
by the fact that in Edinburgh, Birmingham and Newcastle there
are dance bases, so I feel I can have a conversation with those
dance bases about both the benefits of having a space and the
problems, but will be able to be in dialogue about that. My job
as a choreographer and with my dancers is to communicate. I will
not communicate if I do not go out there and dance, so that I
what I want to do. The building, I hope, will give me more strength
to do that.
Q33 Mr Doran: The London aspect—I
am interested to hear what you have to say about that?
Ms Davies: It would be fair to
say, when I started dance in 1966/67, it started in London, because
there was one man who started—Robin Howard. I happened to
be one of the first English dancers to work in his company. Because
it started in London it drew people to it. Because it drew people
to it the next generation started there, because it was incredibly
difficult to start anywhere else. I think it is fair enough to
say that this is the capital of dance at the moment, not only
in Britain, but one of the capitals of the world. The ripple effect
is already happening. It has already happened in a vast way, but
I was born, bred and worked and have my traditions here. I feel
I am better placed, and better rooted here, and would be more
empowered to move out, if this is my area.
Mr McGregor: It is interesting
that the Lottery funded a range of buildings, in terms of a portfolio
of buildings for dance, really across the country. Although Siobhan
has her building here in London, there is a fantastic new resource
facility about to be built in Ipswich. You would not expect there
to be so much demand for dance in primarily rural areas. There
is a huge amount of activity which has enabled them to build.
It is the same in Newcastle. I think your building forms part
of an overall portfolio which is quite diverse, and which is geographically
quite diverse.
Ms Davies: Also the thought of
being an inspiration is a bit daunting, but I hope it will be.
I hope it will encourage people to go. It is possible for a reasonably
small organisation to aspire to that; and to aspire to a place
in which dancers can be safe in. I cannot tell you the difference
between not wearing a woolly hat when you are rehearsing and be
able to move properly. It betters your art form.
Q34 Mr Doran: Derek Purnell, your company
took the decision a long time ago to leave London and set up a
regional headquarters. Partly because my constituency is in the
far north—and we do not have a local dance company; we have
got a local dance space but not a company—I am interested
in the way that has affected the company in its operations and
its outlook?
Mr Purnell: Birmingham Royal Ballet
is probably one of the best success stories in the last ten or
15 years in dance. Moving to Birmingham has been a new beginning
for the company and it has transformed what its aspirations were
and are. I think the key point is about the reason for being in
Birmingham and there has been a lot of talk this morning about
what might be the limiting factors. Ultimately the art is created
by people and so the investment in people is what drives the whole
mechanism. Yes, of course it is good to have proper spaces and
we all need that, but ultimately the connection is with youngsters,
education, all of those factors, it is all about developing people,
it is about the skills within those people. The move to Birmingham
allowed us to engage with that on all sorts of different levels.
It allowed us to develop the artists, it allowed the performers
to rehearse in proper facilities, it gave an opportunity for more
creativity, more new work, which keeps the art form alive. It
also gave us a chance to engage with the local community in Birmingham
in a way that we could not do in London. On every level we have
engaged with the city and the people that live there and that
is where the success of the company is.
Q35 Mr Doran: Do you see the possibility
of other companies following your lead?
Mr Purnell: I actively encourage
it.
Q36 Mr Doran: Wayne, you are a choreographer
and very well known in your field and you are based at Sadler's
Wells. It is probably worth putting on the record that I hope
you are going to be the first choreographer of a dance piece dedicated
to the House of Commons. Obviously you confront the day-to-day
reality of having to make a living and pay the wages. You have
the advantage that you are attached to the premier dance theatre
in the country, but at the same time you are a smaller company
with a different focus. I am interested in the day-to-day survival
and problems that you face in making sure your company functions
and works.
Mr McGregor: I think those day-to-day
problems touch on all the areas which we have been talking about.
It was interesting to hear Mr Bryant's comments about his strip
the willow experiences in school. I had very similar experiences
in school, but it was not strip the willow, it was rugby for ten
weeks followed by the shot-put in my school in Manchester. There
is something about this notion of legitimising choice in some
way so that there is a range of choices to be able to participate
in and engage with arts and the ways in which it is used. As a
choreographer my work ranges from working in poor communities
in east London with boys who have no experience or interest particularly
at the beginning of working in dance. It is not as though we go
in there and do strip the willow, but it might be that we teach
them three-dimensional programmes and that is then translated
into choreography that they work on. I might be working on my
professional work in my company at Sadler's Wells or in a ballet
context or working on a film or advertising. One of the things
that is amazing about dance particularly is the combination of
the intelligences that are at play when you are working. I was
interested in your comments about social anthropology. I have
been working with Marilyn Strathern, Head of Anthropology at Cambridge
and she is interested in what are the transferable skills that
choreographers or dance makers have in terms of intelligences
that can be useful or translatable in other contexts. We have
been working with the Cambridge Genetics Park in thinking about
ethics and the body and thinking of the body as the interface
between a whole range of engaging things that are outside of dance.
As a choreographer what I am interested in is the body, individuals,
people and I am interested in communicating ideas. That broaches
and embraces everybody from audiences to young people who might
be interested in dance, to professionals who want to have a career
path between starting dance when they are eight to going through
a youth programme, to be experimenting with improvisation. Antony
Gormley talked about being engaged with this notion of physical
thinking right the way through to the end of a career where you
are thinking about what other options you have necessarily in
dance and using some of those skills in other contexts.
Q37 Chris Bryant: I am picking up from
the evidence we have had today that there is quite a drive for
dance to have its own independent buildings and independent funding
stream. Nearly all the dance that I have seen in my life has been
within some other art form. I saw Cyrano at the National
two weeks ago and there is vast amounts of dance in that, I think
probably too much, it slows it down. I just wonder whether that
segregation process is the right route.
Ms Davies: You would completely
accept that a fine artist would have a form of separation or a
composer or a poet. Our art has just as many grappling tools as
any other art and maybe there is a perception of it being collaborative.
It may not be the first art that any one of you would have thought
of when you turned round and said I am going to go to the theatre
or I am going to go to a gallery, dance would probably be lower
on the list. What makes it extraordinarily exciting is that the
potential of it now to be a different art form for this century
is incredibly open. It does not have the possibility of a limiting
history, in other words we know exactly how music developed. Because
we did not have photography or film up until a certain point and
even the written word about dance is rare, here we have a new
chance and a new beginning. Everything from your idea of the strip
the willow dance has moved on extraordinarily in the last 20 years
to encompass everything that Wayne says. As a body of people we
all know exactly what he is talking about. I do not think you
would have thought it had that much potential when you arrived
here this morning, but it does have this extraordinary potential
for the new and I know the new does not always work and we have
to be rigorous about how we progress it, but it is an incredible
tapestry of potential events that we are part of.
Q38 Chris Bryant: Can I ask you about
the new and the old because a perception of dance is that it is
about ballet and it is about being on point and it is about conservatoires.
I just wonder whether there is not a very conservative funding
issue in that because that attracts so much of the funding the
new does not get enough of a look in.
Mr McGregor: Because there is
a portfolio of clients that have generated work over a long time
and that lineage is very important and their work is very important,
it has been tied up in developing and they have needed a certain
amount of resources and still do. There is a slight dichotomy
between those organisations and being able to nurture and develop
younger organisations and really young choreographers. There have
been steps made to try and redress that, but there is a gap. The
money available to spend on those new emerging forms is considerably
less than the money that is already allocated to some of the other
organisations. That is not to say that you should take money from
them and give it to the new, rather the pot of money needs to
be enlarged to be able to have that very clear kind of developmental
possibility.
Mr Purnell: If we are talking
about dance as a sector, the aspirations and thoughts that Wayne
had are exactly within a ballet company as they would be within
any other dance company, it applies equally to us. We do Swan
Lake with the tutus and all of that stuff and we get a huge
response to that in terms of our audiences. If you take the Birmingham
example again, if you think that the very first bit of local authority
funding to that was when the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet was as
an artist and in education, here we are 20 years later with a
dance school relocating from Camberley to Birmingham and we have
the Dance Exchange, the new facilities that the Lottery has funded,
the Hippodrome development and so on, it just shows you how sometimes
some of the larger companies can instigate a change in terms of
where the arts within the cultural landscape of a particular city
are. I think that is absolutely the case in Birmingham, the CBSO
and ourselves and that has allowed SAMPAD and other organisations
that are here to grow within that context and I think that is
a hugely valuable contribution that we can make, apart from at
the practical level in offering studio space and all of those
things, to change people's perceptions.
Q39 Chris Bryant: The Adventures in
Motion Pictures and from Swan Lake have happened through
the Royal Ballet or through you?
Mr Purnell: A large proportion
of those dancers would have been trained through the Royal Ballet's
school and systems anyway.
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