Memorandum submitted by The Place
I welcome the Committee's inquiry into the development
of dance as an art form.
Of all the performing arts, dance offers particularly
exciting potential for the UK at the moment. Our society is growing
ever more skilled at reading visual images, which no longer come
a poor second to the spoken and written word. As an activity dance
is widely enjoyed, and is found within all the world's cultures.
In performance a great dancer has the power to touch anyone watching:
no translations or surtitles are needed. How we move, how we experience
and communicate with our bodies is core to how we place ourselves
in our society and our environment. Dance is a meeting place open
to us all: common ground.
Reflecting this potential, recent years have
seen more dance performance, more audiences and more people dancing
both for enjoyment and the other personal benefits it brings.
There is scope for far more. In order to sustain this new growth,
our institutions and champions must join together to provide proper
support, appropriate in range and quality, at each key level across
the country. There are currently serious gaps which threaten the
artform's healthy future.
As Richard Alston, The Place's artistic director and one of the UK's leading choreographers, says: "Dance can only aim to change people's lives if the people doing it have had their lives changed themselves. It needs to be shared at the highest level. My feeling about life was changed by the sheer inspiration of seeing extraordinary dancers at an international level. To know that you could move with that kind of skill, that kind of focus showed me that dance could reach anyone and everyone."
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Dance fuses this excellence with an equally high ability
to attract audiences and participants of all backgrounds. But
it is crucial that the experience we offer, whether to an audience
or members of a class or a workshop, inspires.
Two things are necessary to achieve this. First, professional
artists, teachers and promoters need to have sustainable working
conditions: studios in which to work, spaces in which to perform
and resources to earn their living. Dance needs to offer a viable
lifestyle for those working within it across the country. There
must be room for experiment, for investment in new forms and collaborations
to provoke future growth.
Modest but well-focused investment in dance film making,
especially by Arts Council England, the BBC and Channel 4, has
led to dance film spearheading artistic experiment in film-making.
Great interest is now shown in dance film by artists and audiences
with no specialist dance background. This has been achieved on
minimal budgets. The postgraduate course Dance For The Screen
at The Place's London Contemporary Dance School is the only course
of its kind in the world, but there are resources only for a part-time
course leader. What returns could be achieved with greater support?
Secondly, those working in and entering the profession need
to have acquired and sustain the high level of technical skill
necessary to inspire through dance.
WORKING CONDITIONS
AND RESOURCES
Arts Council England and other organisations continually
support and evaluate the state of the dance profession, both in
its own right and as a valuable contributor to collaborative forms
such as musical theatre, dance film and music video. Central government
has done much to increase the investment in dance, through increases
in revenue funding and through the distribution of lottery funds.
There are now more good buildings for dance, and better resources
with which to work.
Some developments have undermined these improvements. For
instance:
— Local authorities are often no longer able to
provide the level of support that they used: budgetary pressures
combined with no statutory responsibility make it hard for them
to prioritise the arts. So the increases in central government
funding have often been replacing funds lost from local government.
— The increase in National Insurance contributions
payable by employers has also lessened the impact of increases
in central government revenue funding of the arts.
— The forthcoming changes in VAT rules for voluntary
organisations will benefit dance companies and venues with a high
proportion of income earned through ticket sales but disadvantage
organisations working in poorer fields where they are more dependent
on fundraised income.
— Arts Council England's recent injection of increased
funding to theatres following the Boyden report has led to higher
wages in theatre; in many cases dance has found it hard to retain
its technical staff or in doing so has increased its technical
budgets to the detriment of other areas.
— The new structure and procedures adopted by Arts
Council England are not yet bedded in, and both the Council and
its clients are investing energy in learning how best to work
within them. Many in the dance profession feel the Council needs
to do more to communicate with its clients during this time of
change, to explain how the Council is working and to listen to
the profession's views of the changes' impact. The recent Dance
Open Meeting organised by the Council's national office was accordingly
a welcome initiative: more would be welcome.
These are examples of ways that well-intentioned investment
has had its impact reduced. I hope that the Committee will encourage
the relevant ministries and their agencies to work more closely
together to increase the benefits of their contributions to dance.
SKILLS
The dance profession has done much to improve the ways dancers
develop their skills throughout their working lives. Independent
dancers, who work on a succession of short-term projects, can
now for the most part find a suitable daily class provided by
any of a number of agencies.
Six years ago dance faced a major challenge through the loss
of local authority discretionary grants to fund students taking
full-time undergraduate vocational training. Schools such as London
Contemporary Dance School at The Place were increasingly able
to draw their student body only from those who could afford to
pay.
This issue was addressed through the HEFCE's creation of
new Higher Education Institutes like the Conservatoire for Dance
and Drama, providing funding for 75% of the student intake for
UK and EU students. For the first time for many years, HEFCE-funded
institutions have been able to select on the basis of talent alone.
This major step forward has revealed another issue requiring
urgent action. Recent auditions show that UK applicants regularly
fall short of competitors from elsewhere in the EU and around
the world. Other countries are offering their young people a much
better grounding in dance skills than the UK.
Dancers need to acquire their full range of skills between
the ages of 10 and 20. We need to ensure that children across
the country experience dance and where they have interest and
potential, resources are provided to help them develop their skills
to the necessary level. This is not currently happening. The Music
and Dance Scheme of the DfES has recently funded two pilot schemes
to help find ways to address this issue for young people. But
the root of the issue lies, as with so many other issues, in the
place of dance within the national curriculum.
The artistic director of Phoenix Dance Theatre and the Principal
of Northern School of Contemporary Dance were friends at Harehills
Middle School in Leeds. Both from South Asian families, they came
into contact with dance thanks only to an inspired teacher, Nadine
Senior. With her challenging support, they continued their interest
and developed their skills throughout the rest of their schooling.
Both applied successfully to train professionally at London Contemporary
Dance School, and then pursued careers as dancers. Later, one
turned to choreography and one to training and education. Each
is now working back in Leeds, a major figure in UK dance and a
role model for younger generations.
Schools have a vital role to play to seed the future vitality
and impact of dance. I urge the Committee in its inquiry to focus
particularly on how schools, educational and training agencies
can work together to improve the ways the UK invests in the future
of young people and its dance profession.
2 May 2004
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