There are many tasks that journalists must undertake during any given day but one of the most fundamental is conducting interviews.

Whether it's discussing the nature of things with a dance maker or a dancer about their work and profession or haranguing a politician or bureaucrat about their policy decisions the interview is a fundamental part of obtaining, more often than not, hidden information.

Sans diligent questioning from an inquiring mind such information may otherwise not come to light.

A journalist that never speaks to anyone is not a very good journalist at all. How can you ever understand something if you never speak to anyone about things that, on close inspection, don't make a whole lot of sense?

Due diligence is how we all know that the press are writing from a position of informed opinion and not just howling at the moon as many have accused this writer and this publication of in the past and near present.

Howling at the Moon

The problems begin when you actually try and obtain an interview. More often than not getting a choreographer or dancer to talk about their work is easy. You ask them, you sit down with them, often on-camera, they have little or no idea the questions you are going to ask them, and they discuss their work with you articulately and intelligently. It's simple.

Not so when you approach Arts Council England however. Not since we interviewed former ACE North East CEO Andrew Dixon, chaperoned by his press officer, in 2005 have we been able to interview an ACE employee on camera about any of their, for want of a better word, schemes.

ACE's most recent high profile scheme is the 'Catalyst Arts' project that, in theory, is going to solve all of the problems related to the government arts funding cuts using methods that don't make a whole lot of sense.

Our piece 'The Philanthropy Gambit' covers these issues in great detail. That piece was written after the communications office at ACE in London had declined to give us an interview with a staffer. The reason they gave, at the time, was 'Catalyst Arts' had not been formally announced, we could have an interview when it was announced.

When the project was formally announced we waited a little and went back to ACE on October 28th and asked them once again for an interview to discuss the issues we had raised in 'The Philanthropy Gambit'.

This time ACE declined because they said all of their staff were too busy and would be too busy until November 14th. On November 15th we contacted ACE one more time and requested an interview with a staff member with knowledge of 'Catalyst Arts' and, once again, we were rebuffed.

Same Old Song

The reasons given were, as the sub heading says, the same old song we've heard before.

ACE wanted to know the questions we would ask (we don't do that), the issues we wanted to raise and why we wanted to raise those issues when ACE had made sure they had explained everything in their own documentation.

Leaving aside the fact that all of those things had been explained to ACE time and time again and the communications staff in London had actually read 'The Philanthropy Gambit' think a little more closely about the last reason they gave for not speaking on the record about 'Catalyst Arts'.

ACE don't think they need to answer questions about a major policy initiative because they have already told the general public everything the general public needs to know in their own documentation.

Don't look now but ACE just became the United States of China.

They tell us what we need to know and how dare we, or anyone else for that matter, be so impertinent as to suggest they explain themselves further.

Trouble

As media strategies go, refusing to do a simple interview is puzzling to say the least because there is no way for ACE to win.

Let's look at this from ACE's point of view.

If you don't do an interview you look like you have no confidence in the scheme you are proposing. Lose!

If ACE thinks Article19 is irrelevant and not worth talking to then they look conceited and smug. Lose!

If you don't do the interview because you think you have told everybody everything they need to know then you look smug, conceited and dictatorial. Lose!

If you consistently stall, give different reasons for not doing an interview and, ultimately, don't do the interview, you look incompetent. Lose!

There is no way to win with this strategy. It's the equivalent of a petulant five year old stamping his or her feet and screaming "I won't, I won't, I won't!"

On the other hand if you do an interview you make the organisation look open, confident, competent, professional and whatever else you need to be to inspire some kind of trust from the tens of thousands of people who depend on you and your policies for their livelihood.

Of course the interview might go badly and expose your £50Million scheme as having more holes in it than a thousand year old fishing net but that's the price you pay for not living in China.

Sound The Alarm

It should be more than a little alarming if not downright terryfying to learn that when faced with a reasonable request for an interview ACE cannot provide a member of staff who can speak with both intelligence and authority on a policy that will ultimately cost £50Million.

The amount of preperation that would have gone into creating this kind of scheme would amount to many thousands of work hours, right?

Meetings and discussions with arts organisations large and small, policy experts, economic experts, communications experts, political experts and experts I can't even think of. Endless discussions running into to the wee small hours fine tuning every little detail, considering every possible stumbling block.

All of these experts feeding their cumulative experience into the hive mind of ACE, honing their knowledge of philanthropic giving to a razor sharp point.

This is of course pure speculation on my part.

Also, given that the member of staff (whom at this point is entirely fictional) would have had several months to prepare for the interview, thanks to ACE repeatedly stalling, talking about 'Catalyst Arts' should, in theory, be easy.

So their decision to hide under a rock is only more damning.

Arts Council England holds the cultural well being of this country in its metaphorical hands and you want those hands to belong to the best and the brightest.

The best and the brightest would be able to handle any question you throw at them about any ACE policy and do it at the drop of a hat.

Amatuers on the other hand will stumble, stammer and stall for all they are worth because deep down they know they really don't have anything to say.

'Catalyst Arts' won't stand up to a stress test and they know it.

Following Arts Council England's announcement of their NPO portfolio on Wednesday March 30th it's not too difficult, even with a cursory analysis, to determine that, as predicted, ACE has simply rearranged the deck chairs on a certain sinking ship. All the while hoping nobody is going to notice.

Looking at the numbers issued by the funding monolith we see the following. The top 9 organisations, in terms of the amount of funding they receive, have each been cut, in cash terms, by 6.6% apart from one, the ENO, who were cut by 2.3%.

Now, try to imagine the statistical probability that organisations as large as The National Theatre, English National Ballet, Welsh National Opera, The Royal Opera House, The Southbank Centre, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Opera North and The Welsh National Opera with all their financial and operational complexity would need to be cut by exactly the same percentage.

That's the kind mathematics that supercomputers take a week or two to churn through. ACE achieved this Herculean feat of number crunching in just 60 days with more than 1300 other applications weighing them down.

What could they have done instead of plucking a seemingly random percentage number from thin air?

Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Ballet are two large companies of comparable size. One operates in Birmingham however and the other operates in the worlds most expensive city, that city being London. Different cities, different financial pressures, surely BRB could take a bigger hit?

Or how about this. ACE comes up with a funding cap on large scale ballet. If they can cut funding with such mathematical precision then why can't they award funding with equal mathematical precision?

Set them both on £6.1Million and free up several hundred thousand pounds for the small and mid-scale. It would also be a useful experiment, and we know ACE is fond of experimenting, to see which company could operate better, The one in London or the one in Birmingham.

Should the one in Birmingham manage to cope better then it would be a signal for the other one to up-sticks and haul ass to Sheffield or some other "regional" locale that is, you know, cheaper!

If that sounds ridiculous then consider this. ACE has already done it with four other organisations. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society and The Halle Concerts Society both received the exact same, multi-million pound grant for 2011/2012 (£2,071,667) as did The London Philharmonic Orchestra and The Philharmonia Orchestra (£2,030,404). This is not an aberration, they've been doing it for years.

The funding for the Royal Opera House actually returns to a higher level than this year by 2014. You can argue about the "real term" effect but that relies on the false premise that everything gets more expensive over time. Some things do, but a lot of things don't. In fact a lot of things, like technology, actually get cheaper.

It also doesn't take into account variables such as reducing costs, reducing a large workforce and reducing enormous, unsustainable salaries. All things that the large scale can do very very easily. If you don't believe us take a look at 'Numbers' (linked below) that cites figures from the mid-scale.

The Mid Scale Blues

The dance numbers specifically don't make a whole lot of sense either. Perhaps the biggest shock was the complete removal of funding from the Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs, a dance company with over 25 years of producing, touring and education experience.

Longevity in and of itself is no reason to keep your funding but when you note the other companies that received large increases you wonder what it is that they are going to do more of that the Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs weren't doing already.

Random Dance [ Company* ] and Hofesh Shechter's company were both awarded large upticks in their funding. The combined amount of their increase is over £300,000. The funding for the Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs for this year is just over £360,000. Why do we get the feeling that one company had to be sacrificed to push more cash into the current flavours of the moment in the dance world.

Mr McGregor, AD of WMRD*, is also supported by The Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells, does he really need the additional financial support from ACE?

Hofesh Shechter's company (Mr Shechter is also an associate artist of Sadler's Wells) also seems to be doing just fine. A minor uptick in his company's funding would probably have been more than sufficient in these "difficult times".

Also, did ACE just come to the conclusion that the Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs kinda sucked after 25 years? No longer worthy of any support whatsoever they just get thrown in the trash with no right to appeal or overturn. So long, farewell, thanks for all the work but we're done with you. Charming!

DanceUK Irony

Another shock was the absence of DanceUK from the NPO list. Just a few weeks ago Article19 asked the national advocacy organisation to comment on the hypothetical situation of two mid-scale dance companies losing their funding completely while Tony Hall and Antonio Poppano were raking in £1.1Million between them at the Royal Opera House.

DanceUK declined to comment at all on any questions we put to them.

Well as it turns out two mid-scale companies were stripped of their funding, the Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs and Henri Oguike. Along with DanceUK the funding total for the three of them comes to well under £1.1Million.

Irony, evidently, has a cruel sense of humour

Geography

Since Wednesday morning there has been a lot of blustering in the media that poor old ACE was put into an "impossible" position by the jackals from the Department for Culture Media and Sport.

That the DCMS is equally culpable for this mess is not in dispute but ACE is the sharp end of the stick when it comes to arts funding and once again they've made a big mess into an even bigger mess.

By failing to adequately tackle the large-scale and dramatically bring their funding down over the next 4 years they have condemned themselves and the arts to repeat the same cycle all over again.

The funding monolith clearly has so much confidence in its new philanthropy plan that all large-scale organisations have their funding cycle running on an inverted bell curve. They get hit next year but then it starts climbing again, for all of them.

This must be reassuring to The National Theatre for example who just secured a £10Million pound private donation from the uber rich owner of Travelex, not so encouraging however for the small-scale dance company that doesn't have any rich friends.

How much money would you like to bet that the lions share of the £80Million promised in match funding for the philanthropy plan ends up in the already deep pockets of the big players?

Even their meddling in mid-scale dance funding makes little sense either fiscally or artistically. DV8 haven't made a new work for two years but suffer no repercussions while Jasmin Vardimon Company has three active touring works but receives £180,000 less than DV8. Say what?

Let us be clear, no one company or dance maker is more important than another and no dance maker at this level is any better at dance making than any other. The critics can wail their subjective disapproval all they want.

For its part ACE can keep pushing the "great art" mantra until they are literally blue in the face because this funding review is a hasty, ill-considered, whitewash for the large-scale and, as far as dance is concerned, an exercise in pinning dance organisations on a map to prove how national they are as a funding body.

ACE even provided their own maps to prove it.

[ The Results ]
[ Numbers ]
[ Mute ]
[ So Now What ]

Arts Council England (ACE) has a plan, a philanthropy plan! Well, it's not their plan it's the DCMS's plan and it was, evidently, dreamt up in a hour during a coffee break while the political hacks were figuring out how to work their new microwave oven.

The Department for Culture Media and Sport then foisted this plan onto ACE and said "deal with it". ACE, of course, obliged and now we're stuck with it. At least we will be stuck with it should it ever get out of the discussion phase.

ACE's plan is simple. £80Million is being put up for grabs. If you, as an arts organisation, raise some money then you can apply to ACE for match funding (to differing degrees) and everybody's happy. What a great new idea huh?

Of course it's not a new idea, it's just ACE's current funding framework done in reverse. If you've been in the game a long time you will know that the funding monolith has never funded any project at 100% of its cost. When you fill in the forms you have to specify where any additional money or support in-kind is coming from.

It's always been like that. ACE and the DCMS are moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic and are hoping that nobody will notice.

Whichever way you do it, getting the private money first or second, it's not going to make getting the private money any easier or any more likely, especially if you don't have huge sums of money to spend on fund raising.

I suppose ACE could always start up a special fund that you could apply to which is specifically to help you with fund raising, only 75% of the cost of course, you would have the find the rest from private sponsors and............... oh never mind!

Lurching

Were you to take a look at the list of organisations funded by ACE under the current RFO scheme (soon to be renamed NPO) you would, I imagine, see the following.

The top 49 organisations, that receive in excess of £1Million, absorb £192.3Million in funding. The remaining 792 organisations in the scheme receive a total of £132.5Million.

ACE's funding strategy has always been top heavy and one of their biggest failings over the last 10 years has been to do absolutely nothing about it.

The Royal Opera House and their ilk may whine that ACE's funding only makes up a certain percentage of their income but you never hear them offering to actually give it back. They won't give it back because, however reluctant they may be to admit it, they depend on it.

When the large scale get themselves into a crisis, real or imagined, ACE comes up with hat-in-hand schemes like Sustain to bail them out. It's a never ending cycle of lurching from one crisis to another.

The independents, small-scale and mid-scale trundle on regardless however, doing what they do with the little they have.

10 Years

Ten years ago or more ACE should have put plans into place to start weaning the large scale organisations off public financing. Either proposing to remove it completely or setting a maximum limit.

You give them five years to get the private sponsorship in place and then, when the clock runs down, that's it, the little ducklings are set free to swim around the lake all on their own.

During this time ACE is vigorously and relentlessly lobbying the DCMS and central government to get effective philanthropy orientated legislation in place to help the large-scale organisations make up the shortfall in their funding.

It doesn't matter what the legislation is (tax breaks, investment incentives, etc) just as long as it's substantive and actually encourages philanthropy, which the most recently proposed scheme does not.

As ACE is recouping massive amounts of money from the large-scale over that five year period it begins funneling it into the rest of the arts. You know, the ones trundling along "making-do" all the time.

But, as we all know, ACE didn't do any of those things. ACE has consistently maintained a policy of panic stricken reaction. Wait until something bad happens then make a bigger mess trying to clean up the first mess.

Anybody with a brain who is only half awake knows that the independents, the small and mid-scale cannot raise money from corporations. They can get some money from foundations and trusts but Pepsico isn't sponsoring Motionhouse Dance Theatre any time soon.

We need to get over the fact that if a lot of arts activity is going to survive then it will have to be, for the most part, publicly funded. As Bill T. Jones said on HBO last Friday;

"... we cannot take it for granted that art, like everything else, can be commoditized and [will] compete in a Darwinian environment".

The coming funding announcements from ACE will be the first indication of whether not they have the balls to eviscerate the cosy world inhabited by the large-scale. Don't cry too much for them if it happens, they'll survive in the long run, especially when they don't have a choice.

History and all the evidence however says that as far as ACE is concerned it's going to be business as usual. They'll just move the deck chairs around a little and pretend that it isn't.

The first round of cuts for those in receipt of regular funding was 6.9% across the board, no exceptions. ACE has hinted that as many as 100 of these organisations could cease to be funded after 2011.

For this editorial we won't be focusing on the cuts though. Instead, let's take a look at the dance professions response to those cuts, or rather the complete and utter lack of response.

If perusing the Twitter feeds, the Facebook pages, press releases, newsletters and the websites of dance organisations across the country was your only source of information about the profession then you would have absolutely no idea what had taken place just a few short months ago.

The relentless chirpiness of the media output, such as it is, belies the struggle going on beneath the surface. Much like the proverbial duck, the dance world is furiously paddling away while presenting the cliched "stiff upper lip" to the world at large.

Many organisations are, of course, being pragmatic and this is absolutely necessary. There is nothing to be gained from kneeling down in the mud, throwing your arms in the air and screaming "why!" at the gods of arts funding.

Let us not forget however that contemporary dance is an artistic profession, a contemporary artistic profession and artists are supposed to comment on the world around them.

Yet the combined forces of the dance world have barely mustered a single word in public to either condemn the governments behavior or rally the troops to fight the cause much beyond adding "twibbons" to social networking avatars.

It's not just the funding cuts either.

A reader recently pointed out that our piece "An Inconvenient Truth" about dance companies and their attitudes towards dancers with disabilities caused a near riot. "The Surplus", on the other hand, that demonstrated ACE's utter incompetence in handing over more than £700,000 in additional money to the already well funded Sadler's Wells Theatre barely causes a raised eyebrow.

ACE wants to give £7Million to Rambert Dance Company for a new studio during a time of massive funding cuts? No problem.

Huge salaries and bonuses for guys like Alistair Spalding (AD of Sadler's Wells) while dancers, in his own words, are paid a "pittance". Whatever.

ACE wants to cut your funding by 6.9% based not on sound financial analysis but expedience? Silence.

The list of things this profession won't talk about is as long as it is infuriating.

On many levels the relationships between the funders and the large scale and the small to mid-scale resembles that of an abusive personal relationship. They promise a lot, deliver a little and every so often you get kicked in the head but you know they love you, probably.

Those new to the professional dance world may well be looking around them and asking; "Where are our leaders? Where is the leadership?"

Thus far this profession has gone gently into the night with naught but a whimper.

Don't forget that what's happening now is not just about you or your company. How the dance profession deals with these issues could affect the art form and those that work in it for a generation if not longer.

Speak, Write, Type

Arts Council England, NDA's and many other organisations have told to us that they welcome criticism. They welcome an open an honest discussion, so they say. There will be no repercussions, so they say. There will be no problem, so they say.

So here it is, your chance to speak up and tell them, us and anybody else that cares to pay attention what you think about what is happening to the arts and to this profession.
Say it here, say it on your own website, say it on Twitter if you must but say something that has nothing to do with how "super excited" you are about a new workshop!

Speaking out behind closed doors or in endless meetings wasn't acceptable before and it's completely unforgivable now. These issues will not go away because we don't write about them or because you don't talk about them.

Note: We cannot migrate the comments from the page where this editorial was originally published. To read those comments click on the link below.

[ The Open Letter ]

by Neil Nisbet

Trying to make a salient point on a rapid fire radio programme is no easy task, as I found out the hard way whilst appearing on a live programme a few weeks ago on BBC Radio 4.

Summing up important arguments about why funding the arts is actually a really good idea into pithy one-liners is not something I would encourage others to do, even if you're good at it, which I'm not!

It is particularly difficult when you are facing arguments that are so ridiculous all you really want to do is sit back and say "huh?", such as the attacks made by Stephen Pollard (editor of the Jewish Chronicle) on street theatre. Perhaps the cheapest and most accessible of all the things funded by Arts Council England.

Such debates/discussions are perhaps better had in less time constrained formats. The bun-fight of a radio debate might be fun for half an hour but it doesn't really help when you're trying to get a point across.

Killer Yoghurt

Over the last few months, since the new coalition government was formed and they began their relentless, negative, puerile threats against pretty much everything, the arguments for and against arts funding have been flowing thick and fast.

From comment threads to the editorial pages in broadsheet newspapers, from the extreme left to the extreme right, a lot of folks have been expressing their views.

Arguments against state funding of the arts are, more often than not, largely based on falsely connecting thing A to thing B. For example; "why should we spend money on the arts and not on the NHS (the UK's National Health Service)?"

First of all you have to ignore the ludicrous assumption that people might be dying for lack of healthcare because a young dance-maker has been given a £5000 grant to make some new work.

These arguments always overlook the fact that in this country the government spends £105Billion, or thereabouts, on health services per year vs £430Million on centralized arts funding.

The entire budget for the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) is dwarfed by the funding for the Department of Health (DoH). The rhetoric doesn't fit the facts but if you're an ideologue then what does that matter?

While we're on the subject let's take a quick look at health care spending (which is being protected by the coalition government from any cuts). Whenever politicians, or anybody else for that matter, talk about health care the one thing they never actually discuss is health. In other words, why are so many people in dire need of medical treatment in the first place?

Imagine going into your local branch of Tesco and being presented with a choice of two yoghurts. One is healthy and the other one is responsible for killing more than 100,000 people every year in this country and another 4-5 million people world-wide.

Would you or anybody still buy the killer yogurt? Do you think the killer yoghurt would still be legal? Would the people who made that yoghurt be sent to prison?

The British Heart Foundation puts the cost of treating smoking relating illness at £5Billion per year and that's a conservative estimate at best. When asked, the DoH agreed with the estimate. Illness related to alcohol abuse? Well, that's another £2.7Billion. All of this expense is completely avoidable because it's all self inflicted.

Yes, it's smoking that kills more than 100,000 people every year and you can buy tobacco products in Tesco.

One of the main reasons that health care spending is so high and why services are so stretched is not just because of bureaucracy or poor management it's also down to far too many people deliberately and willfully neglecting their own health. It's easier to blame a faceless, nameless administrator than it is to look inward however.

Arts funding has nothing to do with it.

Toys for the Rich

Common misconception number two is that the arts are only for the rich, with opera being the goto art-form to substantiate that particular argument.

Well, I hate to break it to the working classes, but most people in this country aren't rich at all, depending on your definition of the term that is. You know those people who help you at the bank? The ones behind the counter? They're not rich either and they work in a bank.

There are plenty of opera seats available for not a lot of money but the arts are comprised of a vast range of performances, events and opportunities happening in almost every part of the country. Opera is a very small part of the overall equation.

So, either the few people who are very wealthy are running around the country at breakneck speed perpetually attending theaters, galleries, and museums or that assumption, to be blunt, is a load of crap.

Issues of accessibility are a complete red herring when it comes to arts funding. Any individual is free to attend any arts performance they wish no matter where it is in the country. If your argument is that people cannot afford to attend then you are inadvertently making the case for increased subsidy, not the other way around.

If your argument is why spend money on things some people don't want then I would counter by suggesting how do you know you don't want it if you've never seen it or experienced it?

Much like health it's your own choice how much or how little you choose to engage with the society you live in.

One more example. Arts subsidy detractors should ask themselves why those with no children should help fund the primary and secondary education system through their taxes? They derive no personal benefit from it so isn't that unfair? Of course it's not unfair because everybody realises (one would hope) that a good education system is vital to the development and progression of any country.

Like the arts in many ways.

Looking for the Bad Guy

When it comes to funding cuts politicians and many others are always looking for a bad guy. If it's not context free public spending trivia (like pot plants in offices) then it's the CEO of a quango making an inordinate amount of money or it's arts funding.

It is often the case that the things that cost the least amount of money are the things we derive the most benefit from. All too often though it is the relatively inexpensive things that get set upon first.

From a politician's point of view though petulantly cutting arts budgets is a lot easier than telling people that they need to stop eating garbage, stop smoking and take some exercise. All of which can be done for free!

That involves trying to tell people what to do for their own good though and Conservatives don't like that.

Cutting arts budgets is a lot easier than tackling transportation infrastructure problems that causes air pollution that cause respiratory illness that costs the NHS a huge amount of money to treat.

It's a lot easier than trying to persuade this country to stop acting like a militaristic world power and cut the massive defence budget from £40Billion to £5Billion.

The list is almost endless.

Ironically so much of what goes on in public life is nothing more than political theatre. It's doing things to placate the political base of a particular party rather than actually achieving anything tangible or long lasting. The ultimate goal of too many in power is nothing more than to keep it.

Until we have a political machine that actually works intelligently and diligently for the good of all its people and appreciates the fundamental values of education, scientific and cultural advancement then this nonsense will never end.

That last sentence probably would have sounded good on the radio! Typical.

[ Photo by Vlasula from Flickr ]

by Article19

Let's talk politics! Now, we know what you're thinking but stay with us, politics are important, sadly, so we're just going to have to put up with them for the time being so listen carefully and we'll begin.

If you want to be a government minister in the UK then there are five departments that you really want to be in charge of. The Home Office, The Ministry of Defence, Department for Education, Department of Health and The Foreign Office.

Why do you want those jobs? Because they have all the money and the Foreign Office let's you hob nob with presidents and prime ministers, so lots of fun travel for the lucky person in charge.

The more money a particular government department has the more chances there will be for you, as minister, to wield a large amount of power and exert massive influence over a huge number of people. Giving yourself a nice little legacy, positive or otherwise, in the process.

The Department of Health, which runs the National Health Service, has a budget of over £95Billion every year. Compare this with the Department for Culture Media and Sport which distributes, on average, about £2.5Billion per year in grants to various agencies, including Arts Council England.

If you watch television news or read newspapers written by adults the big five are the departments that get all the attention, nobody gets famous running the DCMS.

On The Hunt

The latest incumbent at the DCMS is of course Jeremy Hunt, political climber extraordinaire. Press rumblings have him as leader of the Conservative Party when David Cameron, the current Prime Minister, gets bored with yelling at the middle east and goes walkabout.

If you ask us Mr Hunt comes across as a bit too much like a Thunderbirds™ puppet, only less charismatic, but each to their own.

Needless to say you don't go from DCMS Chief Bottle Washer to party leader along a straight, smoothly paved road. You have to climb your way to that job, throwing weaker folks to the side as you go.

So how is he going to get there?

Hunting for Cuts

Cue Mr Hunt's announcement that he plans to cut 50% of the staff at the DCMS. Not cut the arts budget by 50%, but the staff who actually work for him, the cuts to grants come later. He did this weeks before any other minister has put forward their spending plans to the Treasury, the folks who control all the money.

Why do this? Well Mr Hunt is showing the rest of the party what a good little conservative soldier he is and he's doing it with a department that is not, from a public perception point of view, terribly important.

The minister has also unceremoniously kicked the Film Council into oblivion, along with several other quangos, without so much as a meeting to ask anybody what they thought about it. Just hack and slash and prove how tough you are while telling the folks how fundamentally important to our survival the cuts are thanks to the mess the other guys left behind.

During a recent appearance on the BBC political programme 'The Andrew Marr Show' (catchy title! Ed!) Mr Hunt couldn't seem to make up his mind about the health of the cultural sector. On the one hand he decried the Labour government's lack of stewardship with regard to the arts whilst simultaneously discussing the great cultural legacy this country has built up over the last 15-20 years.

So which one is it Mr Hunt?

Hunting for Perception

From a perception point of view it costs Mr Hunt nothing to strip the DCMS down to the bone, and all the areas they fund with it. Arts Council England is the single largest recipient of DCMS funding after the Olympics.

We have mentioned before that you don't win elections by standing up for the arts. You also don't lose elections for cutting the arts down to almost nothing. Far too many people think that the arts sector is filled with ne'er-do-wells ensconced in fancy buildings having long lunches at the public's expense.

There's good and bad everywhere but if you know anything about the arts then you know that perception couldn't be any further from the truth if you stuck it on a rocket ship and sent it to Mars.

Over £1Billion of the figure mentioned above is for the Olympics in London in 2012. After "the games" and the possible large scale cuts take place the DCMS will be almost gutted so will be of even less political value to Mr Hunt. He will have proven himself ruthless enough to move up the food chain when the next cabinet re-shuffle comes.

Hunting for Cause, Hunting for Effect

You think it sounds a little far fetched that a government minister would eviscerate an entire department for his own political purposes? Wars are waged and maintained for nothing more than ego and legacy building so stripping funding from theatre companies, dance companies, museums and libraries is child's play for the seasoned political operator.

In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph Mr Hunt was talking about an "electoral mandate" that he doesn't have. The vast majority of people in this country voted for different ideas and different policies by a factor of 2:1.

When we spoke to one of Mr Hunt's "special advisors" that advisor told us that the country had given the coalition government a mandate. Overlooking the fact that we don't vote for coalitions, we vote for political parties and nobody bothered to ask the voters what they wanted.

Recent economic reports show that the UK's economy is growing, meaning we are no longer in a recession, but the government is unmoved and still maintains draconian cuts need to be made. Further proof, as if any were needed, that these cuts are driven by ideology, not fiscal prudence.

Funding the arts didn't cause the recent financial crisis and cutting them won't fix the problems. The amount of money involved is just too small to make any difference.

Mr Hunt is pandering to his party (the Conservatives, not the coalition) and their base voters for no other reason than it's good for his career. The person responsible for the cultural well being of an entire country is using his position to climb a ladder, nothing more. Every time he speaks with that self satisfied smug grin on his face he sounds more and more disingenuous.

We'll bet all the money in our collective pocket that Mr Hunt, sans any PR calamities or sex scandals, will be moving on as soon as the Olympics closing ceremony sets off its last firework.

Politics is perception, nothing more and at the moment the perception of Mr Hunt is right where he wants it to be.

by Neil Nisbet

The arts world has been in a bit of panic over the last few days since it became clear that the Conservative Party had, apparently, won the general election in the UK and, in short order, the arts would be doomed.

First of all let's clear something up. The Conservatives didn't win anything. In order to form a government in a UK parliamentary election you need a majority, not just any old majority but 326 MPs (Member of Parliament). The Conservatives got 306, it's a majority but close enough doesn't count, no 326 MPs, no government for you.

To form the government they had to make a deal with the Liberal Democrats and their 57 MPs. If the Conservatives want to get anything done then they need those 57 MPs to vote with them. The rule of politics is simple, you can't govern if you don't win and that goes for everything, not just elections.

Votes are needed to pass everything from creating new laws and reforming old laws to passing budgets. If you don't have the votes then you're not getting anything.

If the Conservatives start getting too right wing radical for their new Liberal bedfellows then combing their 57 MPs with the 258 from the ousted Labour Party's voting bloc is enough to put the brakes on.

There are 28 votes to be had from the "other" category than includes The Green Party and the Scottish National Party, amongst others, but the Conservatives would have to bring at least 19 of them over to their side of the fence. Not at all likely considering the ideological differences at play.

Of course should the Liberal Democrats be so suitably horrified with a Conservative proposal that they, en masse, turn against their new best friends then the coalition would be effectively over and we would all be in for some seriously fun times in the world of political theatre.

Ideology

Many news commentators have pointed out that a coalition of the right wing Conservatives and the left wing Liberal Democrats is on the same level as George W. Bush being Vice President to Barack Obama. It really is just a bit mad.

As far as arts policy goes however the two parties are in agreement. Being unreservedly vague is the best policy!

The Liberal Democrats say this much;

"Liberal Democrats have a proud tradition of championing the arts, culture and heritage. Liberal Democrats recognise the enormous contribution that arts, heritage and culture make to the lives of citizens. We believe that culture should be valued for its own sake as well as for the undoubted benefits to other areas, such as the economy, health, crime prevention and education."

With the Conservatives saying;

"Culture, media and sport are all vital for our quality of life, as well as being huge generators of wealth and prosperity for our economy: tourism is the UK's fifth biggest industry and the creative industries account for 7.3 per cent of GDP."

Two things we know for sure are the Conservatives want to cut £66Million from the budget of the Department for Culture Media and Sport (which provides Arts Council England with its funding) and they want to shore up arts funding from the National Lottery.

When it was first created, the UK's National Lottery did just that, provided money to the arts (which it still does although to a lesser extent). There's nothing really new in the proposal then. The crucial factor is how Central Government funding will be balanced with Lottery funding. Will the numbers go up, or will they go down?

The Liberal Democrats are apposed to this idea. Their manifesto states that; "We would also change the way the Lottery is taxed to generate more money for good causes."

If you work in the arts then, realistically, it shouldn't matter where the money comes from as long as it comes and is sustainable in the long term.

There's nothing to suggest that the National Lottery is more or less dependable than the whims of Central Government and the vagaries of the global economy, the reasons for which we're facing cuts to begin with.

Pressure Points

Should the worst come true with massive cuts in central funding to ACE and arts programmes across the country then the new coalition government does at least make it easier for activists to put pressure on the politicians.

There are 57 particular pressure points we can think of, here in TheLab™

No matter your personal political ideology the Liberal Democrats are, whether you like it or not, in a very strong position to veto almost anything the Conservatives want to do, they just need to summon up the courage to do it if things start getting really bad. They are, effectively, an opposition within the Government itself.

Via their website the Liberal Democrats provide a handy list of who their MP's are and how you can get in touch with them and start lobbying when things get tough. DanceUK's "Dance Vote" project was a bit weak willed, now they have some real targets to focus on.

Let's also not forget that elections are happening all the time (thanks to people being corrupt or dying, etc). Finding Conservatives who won their seats by slim majorities is very easy thanks to the BBC's Election 2010 website.

Eric Ollerenshaw, a Conservative MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, won his seat by just 333 votes. That's a big incentive for him to not act like a right wing jackass for the next 5 years.

He, along with many others, should be a prime pick for activists to lobby in terms of specific policy votes because you only need to get a few hundred people in his constituency to vote against him to put him out of a job and chip away at the Conservatives shaky "majority".

The more people that remind him of this, the more insecure he will become.

If you think that sounds too much like hard work then consider this. The Conservative party picked up 10.7 million votes from the 29.6 million people who voted. That means the vast majority of people who voted wanted another party to be in power.

Sadly, arithmetic and democracy are not always on the same page but there is a loud opposition voice, we just have to needle it a little to wake it up.

Get Off The Floor

For the moment we would advise the wacky world of the arts to stop freaking out, threatening to leave the country and to generally stop laying down on the ground and crying like little children begging the big bad government not to hurt them.

Get up because there's a fight to be had and nobody says you have to fight fair, it might even be fun!

[ Photo by Coldspire ]
[ Liberal Democrat MP List ]
[ Election Results from the BBC ]

by Neil Nisbet

If you follow politics anywhere in the world, especially around election time, there is one subject that dominates almost all others that politicians will speak about and that subject is job creation.

Take a long hard look at the US political scene at the moment and all of the current chatter (aside from the healthcare debate) is about creating jobs or what can be done to stop jobs being lost. Creating jobs, we are told, is the key to economic recovery, economic stability and joy throughout the land.

Jobs make people happy, provide them with money so they can live their lives, they can spend that money on goods and services which is good for the economy and pay taxes which is good for the country, etc, etc.

Jobs are good, we know this because everybody keeps telling us that.


So why don't we ever hear any chatter from the funding bodies, the government or pretty much anybody else about creating real jobs for artists? Of course, here in TheLab™, what we choose to focus on is creating jobs for professional dancers.

What do we mean by "real jobs"? Well, that would mean being employed full time with holiday pay, sick pay, maternity leave (for men and women), overtime, pensions, meaningful enforceable contracts and all the usual good stuff. You get that working in a bank so why not working as a dancer?

Dirty Numbers

Some quick and dirty arithmetic throws up some interesting numbers.

If we look at the regularly funded dance companies in England and Scotland, the ones that provide the closest thing to full time employment for dancers, then we have (approximately) 145 dancers in 19 companies. Few, if any, of those are full time employees however with most on irregular contracts with extended "off contract" periods.

20 of those dancers work for Rambert and some of the 145 dancers are apprentices and get paid little or nothing to gain experience with a professional company. As you can imagine, going by the name of this website, ballet companies are not included.

Essentially however most of those dancers are part-time employees.

In England and Scotland there are nine National Dance Agencies* (all publicly funded as are the dance companies) and they employ 195 administrators including full-time and part-time employees. The number is approximate because figuring out just how many people work for The Place in London is not at all straight forward (we put their numbers at 60 regular employees).

There are of course innumerable smaller dance agencies and organisations working to "promote" dance and there are many project level dance productions going on all over the country. Trying to guestimate those numbers is something Arts Council England does in their 'Dance Mapping Study' so download that and revel in the fantasy.

It is safe to assume though that there are more full-time, better paid jobs working in dance administration than working as a professional dancer in England and Scotland, two countries with a combined population of 54 Million people.

Training for Unemployment

A few weeks ago the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) announced that a new dance school would be opening at their home base in Glasgow at the cost of £6 Million. When we asked them if any thought had been given to where the graduates from this school would find work they said;

"All degree programmes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama are subject to a rigorous process of scrutiny prior to validation.  The BA Ballet programme at the Academy was no different.  Prior to validation there is a period of wide and thorough consultation within the HE and FE sector, with arts organisations and with potential employers. 

The validation panel for each degree programme includes external representation from the profession, working practitioners and leading academics.  

The Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Modern Ballet) at the Academy, in partnership with Scottish Ballet, Scotland's award winning national dance company, combines the specialist facilities, resources and knowledge of the RSAMD with the artistic input and guidance of Scottish Ballet making the degree programme an excellent opportunity for gifted students who wish to pursue a career in professional dance."

We don't know what any of that means but basically it comes down to this. Once they graduate, the RSAMD has no earthly idea what their students will do about finding work because Scottish Ballet cannot possibly absorb all, if any, of their graduates.

To put it simply, too many dancers are being trained and nobody is working to create jobs for them when they graduate.

Off the Record

If you want to know where the funding bodies are on this particular issue then we have to do something that journalists are not supposed to do other than in exceptional circumstances and these are, as far as Article19 is concerned, exceptional circumstances.

We're going to tell you something that was said to us "off the record".

An off the record discussion is not like attorney/client privilege or doctor/patient confidentiality. There are no laws governing an off the record statement and being "off the record" does not give someone a remit to say whatever they choose secure in the knowledge that such statements will never be repeated.

We won't tell you who said it or where that person works just that they are a high ranking arts official. During a discussion about jobs and dancers pay and what this particular organisations position was on that subject the official told us (and we're paraphrasing because there is no recording of this);

"...if dance companies want to pay their dancers more money then they are free to hire fewer dancers, it is the dance companies own choices that dictate the amount their dancers are paid."

What is strange about that particular comment is that it's both completely accurate and completely ludicrous. Let's set aside for the moment the fact that a high ranking arts official is actually suggesting that the dance sector employ fewer dancers, actually cut jobs where there are none to begin with.

Yes, if you employ fewer people you can pay those people a lot more money. Dance companies could all employ one dancer each and those dancers would be fantastically well paid, very lonely of course, but the market for creating solos would be booming.

The downside is you have fewer jobs, a massive reduction in creative potential for choreographers and it's bloody stupid!

Ironically if regularly funded dance companies (RFO) stated they wanted fewer dancers because they wanted to pay their dancers more ACE or Creative Scotland would probably question why they needed increased levels of funding year on year because they had fewer staff.

Creation

In terms of creating more jobs for professional dancers there are a number of ways to do it. First of all you could increase funding to current RFO companies to enable those companies to extend employment contracts so they are actually full time.

Enhanced funding would also enable companies to employ more dancers than they actually need for touring and performing. Why do that? Well since dancers are not indestructible they tend to get injured so additional dancers mean rotating casts, more coverage on education and teaching projects and a general smoothing out of the workload.

You could also increase the number of RFO companies by expanding smaller project based companies with more dancers and longer employment contracts. This doesn't necessarily mean more touring what it does mean is more time spent on creating work, it is after all the raison d'être of a dance company, and less time "getting things done in two weeks" that is the current norm in all too many cases.

What about paying for all of this?

Well this is one of the richest countries in the world and there is plenty of money to go around. At one end of the scale we could spend slightly less money on fighter planes and nuclear submarines we don't need to protect us from terrorists too stupid to buy travel tickets for the planes they want to blow up with fictitious explosives.

At the other end of the scale ACE managed to conjure up £40 Million to prop up failing large scale arts projects that were over dependent on rich people giving them money that wasn't really theirs to begin with. £40 Million buys a lot of jobs at the creative end of the arts sector.

If we look at the 'Dance Mapping Study' released by ACE some months ago they boast about spending and stimulating spending on new dance buildings to the tune of almost £500 Million over the last few years. They boast no such numbers when it comes to creating jobs for professional dancers.

ACE could also not spend £50,000 producing pointless mapping study reports full of fictitious numbers and information. There's plenty of money, we're just not spending it very well.

A lot of people work in arts administration, we're sure they can come up with a plan of some kind to help create full time jobs for dancers, there's so many of them it's like group thinking on steroids.

A prominent dance education principal said to us recently that he couldn't understand why ACE, the Government, et-al didn't spend money creating jobs for dancers because, after all, it would be a lot cheaper than creating jobs in other industries.

Go figure!

[ photo by Dunechaser ]

A comment we, here in TheLab™ and you, our dear readers, probably hear or read quite often is "we encourage healthy debate on (insert you're own topic here)". The comment is usually made by the individual/group/organisation that is being debated but more often than not they would, if it's all right with you, rather you actually did the exact opposite and didn't debate them at all, healthily or otherwise.

Also, the end of the "healthy debate" comment is almost always followed by the mightiest tool in the PR handbook, the word "but".

Our recent piece on the integration of dancer's with disabilities, 'An Inconvenient Truth', provoked, somewhat unexpectedly, a lot of comments some of which were quite angry about the fact that we had even dared to raise the issue to begin with.

One commenter, not published on Article19 but on a protest group on Facebook (and that's not a joke), even suggested that Article19 was behaving in a "fascist" like manner and how dare we "interrogate" dance companies with our impertinent questions?

Article19 has also been criticised for not doing enough "real" dance writing or covering "what's right" in the dance profession instead of what's wrong in the dance profession. All conveniently unquantifiable.

For the record, Article19 considers its "positive" material to be the video featuring. The actual illustration of the wok being created and performed by companies large and small across the UK and beyond.

Some may disagree and there are certainly many more positive aspects to the dance profession than creation and performance but that's one aspect we choose to focus on and one aspect that we can successfully highlight.

Reflection

Upon reflection and looking around the rest of the dance/arts media it's not hard to understand why some readers get a bit ruffled with some of the things this publication chooses to write about.

Cheerleading is standard operating procedure for pretty much every website/print publication or blog that covers the wide world of dance. No matter what particular element of the art form they cover the tone is almost always relentlessly upbeat. The mainstream press follows the same mantra. The end of year or the coming year reviews/previews from the broadsheets read like press releases from the Dance Profession is Holier than Though Coalition.

There's nothing wrong with being upbeat or positive but there is danger in choosing to blinker yourself to the multitude of problems faced by this profession.

It's asking for trouble if you choose to ignore the fact that dance, especially in the, so-called, higher echelons of the profession, is run by people, people with egos, agendas and personal issues that may cloud their judgement and steer their decision making process in somewhat puzzling directions.

We all do it but personal decisions rarely affect large numbers of people in a professional context. Simply because someone wears a suit or has the title "Artistic Director" or "CEO" doesn't make them immune to the human condition.

It is for those reasons that Article19 is required to get on the phone and ask questions, often times over and over again. Nobody is being "interrogated" however, they are being asked straightforward questions and the answers we get (or not) are the things that will save them or sink them.

Irony

There was a hefty dose of irony from one particular comment on 'An Inconvenient Truth' citing Janet Smith's response to that piece asking why we couldn't write something like that instead? Completely overlooking the fact that without Article19's piece and without us contacting Scottish Dance Theatre seeking answers to our questions Ms Smith's response simply would not exist.

Healthy debate can only exist if all those taking part in that debate speak openly and honestly about the issues that affect them. It's only healthy if organisations or individuals respond openly and honestly when questions are put to them not only by us but by anybody with an enquiring mind looking for answers.

As is so often the case somebody will be on the receiving end of bit of harsh commentary. But if you really believe what you're doing is right then it should be fairly easy for you to defend yourself. Article19 isn't coming at you with swords and shields, just some pointed words.

If you have screwed up, own up, say sorry and try to do better the next time. Don't try and play the political communications game because the world and its' dog got wise to that a long time ago, we all know spin when we hear it and read it.

Just in case you haven't noticed there is no debate, discussion or much of anything going on in dance right now. Discussion is happening, it has to be going on somewhere surely, but it must be happening behind closed doors because we can't find it.

The British Dance Edition in Birmingham, coming up in February, has no real debates or alternative presentations to counter the cheerleading culture when that type of gathering would be the ideal place for some honest back and forth.

There are no discussions about pay for dancers, healthcare, job creation, contracts, funding, touring, integration or anything of any real importance. Just John Ashford and meaningless chit chat about the previous nights shows. Nothing for anybody to get upset or feel uncomfortable about, because why would we want that?

Article19 is going to continue doing what it does for as long as possible, nothing lasts forever after all, so for 2010 why not tell us what questions you would like to ask and of whom you would like to ask those questions. Maybe you can even ask them yourself!

[ Ad Photo by Jason Whittaker ]

by Neil Nisbet

"It's always impossible to legislate for talent. There are successful younger women out there - Maresa von Stockert, Cathy Marston, Jasmin Vardimon, Kate Prince - but they are not in the same league as McGregor, Bourne et al. Something has to change if the next great female choreographer, whoever she may be, is to make it to the top - and stay there."

In the paragraph above Judith Mackrell, writer for the Guardian newspaper, unwittingly sums up the entire mess that is the dance profession in the UK, and probably in a lot of other places. Her words were prompted by the communications disaster that usually follows whenever Alistair Spalding, AD of Sadler's Wells in London, opens his mouth.

If you're a sports fan imagine that your annual league championship was decided not on one team beating another by scoring more points/touch-downs/runs or whatever but by the pundits waxing lyrical about which team was the best.

No matter how good your players or how profoundly they destroyed their competition it would make not one bit of difference because, ultimately, victory would be decided by retired players and lecherous, perma-tanned TV hosts. Imagine just how frustrating that would be.

Critics, theatre directors, producers, promoters and, to a certain degree, the minions at ACE (Arts Council England), are what we have in place of pundits and lecherous TV presenters. They will all tell you that "they" and "they" alone understand what really makes a good piece of dance tick and the rest of us just don't get it.

If Wayne McGregor and Random Dance Company, for example, are funded, programmed by a large theatre, reviewed positively by Ms Mackrell and the odd punter puts in a nice comment card or three then Mr McGregor is a member of the elite, no? Even better if you add some international touring to the mix.

Surely all these people can't be wrong?

Of course, they're not wrong. But they're not right either which I'm pretty sure is a paradox so the universe should implode any second now......................... Good, we're still here.

Elevation

Dance makers are elevated to their respective positions, in Ms Mackrell's imaginary League of Extraordinary Dance Makers, by the decisions of other people. If you think it's all about talent and skill then it's time to wake up and smell the strong black coffee. The mantra "you're good because we say you are" is alive and well and probably living in London.

Dance companies need to create work and they need to perform work. To create work they need money so, in this country at least, they have to turn primarily to ACE and to get programmed they have to turn to venues. In a perfect world these bureaucratic bodies would be staffed with open minded, free thinking individuals willing to take a chance on good ideas presented by smart people.

OK, you can stop laughing now, let's move on!

Taken to extremes it's easy to spot the difference between a hardened professional and a first year dance student dipping their toe in the wacky world of dance making. Spotting the difference between Jasmin Vardimon and Akram Khan, in terms of professional quality, is a much harder, if not completely impossible task.

The Sadler's Wells debacle has served to highlight that, on the one hand, Mr Spalding is an out of touch jackass with a penchant for saying and doing stupid things (YouTube contest anyone?) On the other hand it has highlighted the fact that the upper echelons of the dance world (meaning large scale venues) are nothing more than an exercise in back scratching and pandering.

It's not hard to imagine long conversations over dinner between Mr Spalding and Mr Khan (or whomever) where cosy agreements are made along the lines of "sure you can bring your solo to the Wells next year, don't worry about it". Sounds a bit theatrical? Well this is show business dahling!

Mathew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' is being programmed, again, at Sadler's Wells because it appeals directly to the "ladies that lunch" crowd who flock to that theatre to see any young male, bare chested and in feathered trousers flapping about the stage (seriously, what the hell goes on in Middle-England?)

It is suitably ironic that the front cover of Ms Mackrell's book 'Dictionary of Dance' (co-written by Debra Craine) features a still image from that particular show.

Here in TheLab™ we think Mr Bourne's 'Swan Lake' is a load of crap. A stagnant, poorly constructed mess that sullies the good name of an ancient classic. That's just our view of course and you may feel differently but I challenge you to prove that 'Swan Lake' is not a load of crap. It would be just as difficult for Article19 to prove that it is a load of crap though.

It's that whole "subjective opinion" thing again!

Big Players

What the "big players" (as one of our readers recently described them) don't want people to realise is that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing. It's all guess work and pre-fabricated friendships wrapped up in 500 word press releases.

Female dance makers can no more break through this particular glass ceiling than our in-house cat can become President of The United States, no matter how much will power the bedraggled moggy can summon up through his arthritic paws.

They can't break through because there are no quantifiable steps they can take (pardon the pun) to shift the perspective of people like Mr Spalding. They could of course become more "assertive" which in my mind conjures up images of Ms Vardimon dangling Mr Spalding out the window of a very high building and threatening to drop him on his head unless he offers her a commission. I've probably seen too many episodes of 24 though.

Let's be very clear however. There is no league, there is no metric, no formula, nothing that can be applied by Ms Mackrell, Mr Spalding or anyone else (including Article19) to determine whether or not one persons work is better than another irrespective of the assertive qualities of the choreographer.

You could at least respect people for saying; "we gave it a shot but that didn't work so we're going to try something else". Instead it comes back to the same old red herrings that women aren't making it and it's all their own fault. The powers that be seem unable to explain what assertiveness, babies, child-care or anything else has to do with someone's skill as a dance maker.

Solutions

What's the solution to this mess? Well personally I'm all for Mr Spalding being dangled from a window by his feet just for the hell of it (don't drop him though, that would be mean!) but I've got the feeling that won't achieve much.

ACE could intervene and demand a more eclectic mix of programming at theatres like Sadler's Wells but it's hard to do that when you're permanently inert and programming female dance makers "just because" is not the way to move forward.

It may sound a bit revolutionary and all but if the problem stems from the people in charge then maybe we should replace the people in charge? Replace them with people that are not narrow minded purveyors of risible drivel.

People that neither seek nor care for the favours of others and look at the world with a wider perspective. People that look beyond ticket sales, statistics, dance mapping studies and the never ending stream of un-quantifiable gibberish that pours out of large institutions on a daily basis.

Where are these people? My personal feeling is their currently creating work in dance studios and tick the "Miss" box on application forms.

[ The Jackass ]
[ The Guardian ]

by Neil Nisbet

"We did ask a lot of women to apply but there aren't that many who want to take on that job and I think that because it is such a male dominated world. Women are insecure about doing it because we [women] have always been led by men. So there you go!"

Those words were spoken, out loud, by Assis Carreiro, the Artistic Director/CEO of Dance East, in response to questions from Article19 about why only one of seven participants in the agency's "leadership" programme was a woman.

Ms Carreiro also said during the interview;

"Because that seems to be the case around the world. I'm a woman, I think it's a big issue but [in] most companies around the world, women, at that age are getting married, having babies, when it's time to think about being a leader and so men take those posts."

Numbers like those are surprising because women out number men in dance by a considerable amount. Dance UK's best estimate was 80% in favour of women. If presidential elections were determined by female dancers voting for Democrats and male dancers voting for the Republicans then Barack Obama could be President of Planet Earth if he so desired!

A quick check of the calendar reveals that it is, in fact, 2008 this year. It's not 1908 or 1808 but 2008. A year of amazing advancements in technology, politics and, one hopes, thinking! Sadly there does not appear to be a lot of thinking going on at Dance East.

In trying to defend the imbalance Ms Carriero pointed out that only two women applied to be on the programme in the first place. However, applications were restricted to those taking part in the organisation's much maligned 'Rural Retreats' project. Reading through the documentation for those projects, past and present, reveals 18 female participants to 72 male participants. Hardly surprising then that few women bothered to apply, or could apply to take part in the "leadership" project.

Ms Carriero protested that "[Dance East] did ask a lot of women to apply" but at least one experienced dance maker we have spoken to, and no shrinking violet at that, told Article19 that she approached Dance East about the project but was rebuffed.

That so many men took part in the retreats project emphasises their focus on classical ballet and classical ballet companies. Ms Carriero denied that with a curt "no they are not". When over 90% of attendees are representatives of ballet companies or from a classical background you have to call that comment exactly what it is, a patent, deliberate falsehood!

Troubling Arguments

More problematic and worrying than the numbers or the arguments about ballet versus contemporary, or other forms, of dance are the arguments used by Ms Carreiro to justify those numbers.

Throughout Article19's short interview with her, Ms Carreiro brought up the greatest hits that every woman in the world, not just in dance, should be infuriated to hear.

Women don't want leadership because they have "babies", because they get "married", because they are "insecure" and so much other outmoded, risible drivel it's difficult to know where to start when rebutting because your eyes are rolling so much it makes your head hurt!

Yes women have children, they get married and, shocking I know, some women might even be ever so slightly insecure. But here's the scoop Ms Carriero, men do all of those things too! They also feel insecurity, perhaps more so, than their female counterparts!

It might be trivial to point out, but let's do it anyway, that the National Director of Dance Strategy, Janet Archer, is a woman, directors of several NDA's are women, the Speaker of The House in the United States House of Representatives, the third most powerful position in the US Government is not only a mother but a grandmother! A woman, Hilary Clinton, came within a whisker of being the nominee for the Democratic party for President of the United States. Oh the humanity!

Article19 has covered several superb dance festivals this year. Urban Moves: run by a woman, Big Mission: run by a woman, British Dance Edition: run by a woman, Forbidden: run by a woman, the list goes on and on and on!

To further add insult to injury when it was pointed out, as an example, that Jasmin Vardimon has both a family and a successful dance company, that has been ten years in the making, Ms Carriero appeared to disparage that achievement because Ms Vardimon's company was not sufficiently large enough to merit acknowledgment!

Javier Du Frutos, by comparison, lasted just two years when entrusted with the reigns of Phoenix Dance Theatre, a company of comparable size.

Heavy Irony

It is ironic that the project which prompted questions from this publication was entitled "International Placements for Artistic Leaders of the Future". What is obvious here is the complete lack of leadership on the part of Dance East.

Article19 would suggest that if your projects are not encouraging enough women to apply to participate then there is something fundamentally wrong with your projects. If your "Rural Retreats" programme is, irrefutably, heavily skewed towards ballet companies and leading ballet companies (four of the seven placement are with ballet companies) then it will follow that few women will be interested in taking part.

There is no doubt, evidenced by Dance East's own published information, that classical companies don't like having women in charge. Whatever the reasons for that (it's hard not to yell "sexism" very loudly) there is no need for a National Dance Agency to perpetuate the problem with projects that are hopelessly skewed towards men.

When, as a women, you are facing competition from hundreds of others for each job that competition makes you try ten times as hard and work ten times as hard because you have to be ten times as good just to be in the same place as a male counterpart.

Within the dance profession, especially in big companies, there is a serious issue that needs to be addressed with regard to hiring female dance makers to the top jobs. That issue is diminished and trivialised when those in positions of influence make stupid comments about babies, marriage and insecurity that paint women as teen movie cliches unable to cope with the harsh realities of the world.

Were this the political arena such comments would undoubtedly lead to calls for Ms Carriero to be ousted from her position. This isn't politics however. Article19 would suggest that Dance East takes a long hard look at the fundamentals of their in-house projects.

They should attempt to discover the real reasons as to why more women are not in top jobs within dance companies and take steps to correct that imbalance.

Should it become obvious that the out of date views mentioned in this commentary persist then it might become prudent for Article19 and many others to ask the National Director of Dance Strategy if it is at all appropriate for Ms Carriero to remain in her job!

[ News: Dance East and Women ]

by Neil Nisbet

It was suitably ironic that during the largest showcase of the strength and quality of UK based dance making at British Dance Edition in Liverpool, Arts Council England was finalising the funding decisions that would see some companies continue to develop and grow as others get left behind to fend for themselves.

Putting the confusion as to why some dance organisations and companies are deemed more worthy than others to one side for the moment, with every new funding announcement the arguments for and against government subsidy of the arts are rekindled.

There are many people in politics, in the media, in the general population and in the arts who take the view that the government has no place providing money to the creative sector. They cite the free market, other funding priorities like education and health care and a decision making process within ACE that is fundamentally flawed and quite possibly corrupt on some levels.

The Free Market

Let's take a look at the free market first. The argument goes that if something is good then people will want to see it and therefore it will be successful and financially viable. TV shows, movies, musicals and record labels do it all the time. They put money into things, publicise them and some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The market takes care of the difficult decision making process because only the really good work will be successful in both commercial and artistic terms. Right?

Spending money on other priorities is the next most common argument for removing government subsidy. Everything else in this country is failing, or appears to be failing. Education, health care, local government, infrastructure, etc are all terrible and the only way to fix those things is by spending more money on them. The arts cost money and what does it matter if we take money away from them to pay for more important things. Right?

The third argument is that Arts Council England is nothing more than a government policy shill with little or no grasp of reality. They're over bureaucratic, spend too much money on themselves, secretive, slow, and spend more time dodging phone calls than they do actually communicating with people. Right?

Point by Point

All of the above would be good points if any of those things were true but they aren't. Well, some of the points about ACE might be true but I'll get to them in a bit.

The "let the market decide" argument overlooks one of the fundamental flaws in letting the public at large decide what should and should not be created. A quick glance at the ratings for the most popular television shows in the UK reveals a litany of soap operas, light entertainment programmes and poorly written drama productions. Many musicians would say the same about the music charts, and many film makers would concur that the popularity of many movies is in no way connected how good they actually are.

Popularity and financial viability are poor indicators of quality. 'Eastenders' is a popular UK soap from the BBC is broadcast 4 times per week in prime time. There are no seasons it just runs and runs (and has been for decades). You have to ask yourself just how good the writing and acting on a show can be when they make 208 of them every year?

The music business is the same. Hugely popular television shows are driving the market towards pre-packaged pretty boys and pretty girls that have little actual skill or creative ability. Multi-million pound karaoke competitions feeding the music charts with an ever expanding list of people who's only desire is to be famous and nothing else.

If we move closer to the arts world we have Matthew Bourne and Adventures in Motion Pictures/New Adventures and his omnipresent productions of 'Swan Lake', 'Edward Scissorhands', 'The Car Man' (it's really 'Carmen' geddit?) and so on. Yes, the shows are popular and any arguments about their respective qualities are subjective and a matter of personal taste. But, Adventures in Motion Pictures started out with Arts Council Funding!

Popularity is not necessarily a bad thing of course. There are lots of productions that are popular and are also well made by people with lots of skill and lots of talent but market forces often tip the balance in favour of the fatuous and everything else takes a back seat.

The subsidised culture sector is also more resistant to keeping touring productions running for decades simply to keep bringing in the money. Contemporary dance makers, for example, are making new work on a yearly basis (for their own companies) and there is little after market enterprise to generate financial support, like DVD sales, soundtrack sales or the sale of TV rights. Why? because DVD distributors and TV companies don't want to invest money in things that require their audiences to pay too much attention.

Taxing Questions

Many tax payers don't like it when their money is spent on something that doesn't directly benefit them. If you don't engage with publicly funded art at all then by default that person will probably resent their money being used to fund it. People with sons and daughters in the military care about military funding but they probably don't care about farming subsidies because they don't realise how farming subsidies help reduce food costs.

For too many people if there is no obvious benefit then spending money on it must be a waste of time. The real problem here is selfish, linear thinking. Grasping the concept that the world doesn't just revolve around you and your family is a problem that is very hard to fix.

Also, the annual budget for the UK hovers around £587Billion per year. The amount spent on the arts makes up less than 1% of that amount. Re-directing money from the arts towards anything else would have little or no impact and the catastrophic damage done to the creative sector would be immeasurable.

ACE

Arts Council England's recent bungling of the new funding announcements has done little to deflect growing criticism that the government quango should be axed and funding decisions moved directly into the hands of the Treasury. Setting aside the fact that this would be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, ACE needs to be fixed not phased out.

Making the funding body completely transparent would be a good place to start. No more cosy meetings behind closed doors where personal relationships and long held friendships are used to leverage funding. We all know it happens, lets not pretend any more that it doesn't.

Transparency is only the start, but it's the right place to start.

Defending Subsidy

Governments are often derided, especially by conservatives/republicans who want nothing more than to look out for themselves and to hell with everybody else. The problem of course is not government in and of itself but bad government, badly run by incompetent people with little connection to reality.

A self serving politician will do just that, serve him/herself and spoil the fun for the rest of us.

The truth of the matter is that governments and public subsidy can and do, when used properly, correct the problems created by a free market hopelessly skewed towards dumbed down commercialism. The free market demands Stomp and Dancing with the Stars? That's fine. The subsidised sector fights back with Hofesh Shechter, Jasmin Vardimon and hundreds more to correct the balance.

Of the twelve video features we have running from British Dance Edition, just how many of those works would have been made if there was no public subsidy for the arts? I'll wager not one would either exist or, if it did exist, would ever have the opportunity to be seen by anybody.

If a talented musician can obtain a grant to develop new work instead of stacking shelves in Sainsburys then that is to the benefit of us all. He or she may or may not be the next Puccini but we have to at least give them a chance. Should we leave that talented musician to the one in a million shot they can get past Simon Cowell and the other airbrushed puppets on the X-Factor? I think not!

Subsidy is littered with problems but the solution is not to remove the subsidy, the solution is to fix the problems. It's a lot harder to accomplish but I think we're smart enough to find a way!

[ Top Image by Thomas Weißenfels ]

by Article19

The end of the year is always a jarring moment for us, here in TheLab™, because we realise that in spite of all the practical, financial and logistical data saying we shouldn't still exist here we are, lurking around like a black hole looking for a galaxy to swallow. As we approach year nine of our existence, six in the form of Article19, we undertake, as usual, our end of year review which will involve, as always, going over the stories of the year and poking fun at Judith Mackrell.

It all got off to a very strange start when it was revealed in January that Simone Clarke, a principal dancer with the English National Ballet, was a member of the British National Party (BNP), a far right political group here in the UK. Not since the audience got their knickers in a twist over Nijinsky's 'Rite of Spring' in 1913 have there been audience protests during a ballet performance. The Guardian, which broke the story, had a hissy fit, Ms Clarke had a lie down and the ENB's press office had kittens.

To further compound the issue Ms Clarke recently announced that she is marrying one of the leaders of the BNP _____________ , (his name escapes us but feel free to add your own in the space provided). We would helpfully suggest that Ms Clarke watches her step (har har Ed!) the next time she goes into the ENB press office!

Barmy Ballet

February rolled into view with another ballet company getting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Scottish Ballet, being a bit strapped for cash, decided to auction off some dinner dates with their dancers to raise money. To further emphasise just how classy this operation was the auction was run on eBay alongside used house bricks and other bits of useless tat. Many in the ballet world thought this was ok, many in the contemporary world wondered why Scottish Ballet was acting like a high priced escort service. The operation raised very little actual money, so no PR damage there then!

Also in February Article19 opened, and then closed some months later, The Film Room. It's was our attempt to have a place on the web for high quality, in technical terms, dance video. After receiving a tiny number of submissions (including two films which had nothing at all to do with dance) we decided to close it, sometimes things just don't work out!

Hilarity made its way into the arts in March when Arts Council England (ACE) decided to start asking people about their sexual orientation on their application forms. Our own EvilImp conjured up images of the conservatives hauling swathes of artists in for questioning as soon as the "pink" map of the UK was complete.

April brought the first gut punch of the year when ACE announced that Grants for the Arts (GFA) were being cut by 35%, or £29Million in real money, thanks to the Olympics. GFA covers one off grants mostly to small companies and new artists. ACE offered a range of excuses, none of which was very convincing, and declined to admit they were in any way responsible.

ACE continued along a path of obstructive behaviour when they refused to release evaluation reports, following a Freedom of Information request made by Article19, on the National Dance Agency Network in England. What were they trying to hide? Maybe one day we'll find out. If anybody at ACE has a grudge against their employer and access to a photocopier please feel free to get in touch.

The big boys in the subsidised arts sector were also getting in a muddle over money, this time it was the BBC and The Royal Opera House. In May the BBC ran a story mentioning a new £10Million donation from somebody with large sums of cash to give away. They decided to conveniently omit the reason they needed the money was because the previous donor, Alberto Vilar, is under indictment in the USA on charges of fraud. If convicted he faces over 100 years in prison (yikes, Ed!). We can't imagine why the ROH wouldn't wan that information in their press release. As for the BBC, it was just sloppy journalism.

Sad Day for Dance

August brought the very sad news that Tanja Liedtke, the newly named artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, died following a traffic accident in the early hours of the morning whilst out walking in Sydney, Australia. Ms Leidtke would have started working for the company in October, she was 30 years old.

Christopher Wheeldon and his new company Morphoses showed up in September to either take over the world or begin a whole new era of ballet, whichever came first. The reviews were mixed but Mr Wheeldon covered his butt by saying that whole "revolutionary ballet" thing would take several years to accomplish so if we wouldn't all mind backing off a little because he's a bit busy. Most of the folks we spoke to in the contemporary world had never heard of him and said they "wouldn't speak to him if they did". Ok, we said that but you get the idea.

We would normally throw in a sarcastic comment about Judith Mackrell here but I think we used them all up, any ideas?

The year has come to an end with ACE spoiling everybody's fun by announcing that 194 companies, count em', will be losing their funding from next year despite ACE itself not having its government funding cut at all. They have adopted a new mantra of "thrive not survive" (stop giggling at the back) which basically means they want to give fewer companies more money, sort of! You can understand the sentiment but you have to wonder why it took them 60 years to figure out that arts organsisations need a lot more that just "tick over" money to get things done. Perhaps they were too busy counting the number of gay people making funding applications!

The Important Stuff

If we were going to give this year a rating out of ten we would give it a very firm five! There has been some fantastic work being made but.........

The cuts to Grants for the Arts and the loss of funding to 194 organisations, 12 of them dance related, are without any doubt a body blow. Yes, 80 new companies will receive regular funding, 8 of them in dance, but these organisations are not interchangeable. Whatever your personal views of their work each company brings something unique to the mix and when they cease to exist, we're all worse off.

Over the last twelve months we have seen some stunning work from Jasmin Vardimon, Hofesh Shechter, Phoenix, Scottish Dance Theatre, Vincent Dance Theatre and from the new comers like All Play, Wired Aerial and the dancers from Verve were outstanding. The community performance sector (if you can call it that) was given a loud wake up call by the dancers taking part in MK RAW 2007. They proved that with a little time, commitment and a lot skill you can put out a fantastic show that is in no way patronising.

In these modern times dance and the arts in general are still burdened with overbearing language and an infrastructure that is responding to new technology and the internet at too slow a pace. Here in TheLab™ we genuinely believe that dance has the skills, imagination and strength to make other art forms lay down and cry like a baby, if the message is delivered in an effective way.

The mantra for 2008 should be; This is who we are and this is what we do!

Keeping it simple and not taking it too seriously is the way to go. Have a nice holiday, then get back to work!

by Article19

This coming November the Government will announce their, so-called, comprehensive spending review. This review will determine just how much money goes where from the national budget of approximately £500Billion.

Arts Council England has been fretting about this review to such an extent they have been slashing budgets and sounding the death throes of the arts for over a year now. Their primary cause for concern is the London Olympics in 2012. Just how much money the Government is going to divert from, among other things, the arts has been cause for much speculation.

Spending cuts, if they happen, will almost certainly lead to job losses and a reduction in opportunities for new artists to make work and build a career.

Let's just say the worst comes to the worst and the funding cuts are deep and long lasting. If that happens then a number of companies may well be pushed out of regular funding support and into the never ending, form filling, black hole of Grants For The arts applications. The number of job opportunities for dancers will slow to a trickle (at least less of a trickle than at present) and if we're not very much mistaken, the world will refrain from turning!

What would the reaction be from this particular profession were all that to happen?

It's hard to imagine the reaction would be anything more than muted disapproval followed by a fair amount of head shaking. Beyond that you really cannot visualise anything more biting and, dare we say, militant coming from the dance profession.

Despite the level of commitment, diligence, energy, intelligence and strength (both mental and physical) needed to keep it together in this business, fighting the bureaucratic machine is not something that comes easy to professional dancers.

It really is very difficult to understand why.

Gnawing Doubt

Of course it's easy for us, Article19, to get away with criticising, berating and even humiliating those that cause so many problems for the dance profession. They can't do anything to us, there is no revenge they can enact, we have no table for them to thump their collective fist upon.

We don't receive any funding from anybody, there is no board of directors to satisfy and no patronage to guarantee. We are the proverbial "loose cannon" and we don't have to answer to anybody except our readers. It really is rather good fun when you think about it.

Yes, there are rats gnawing on the power cables around our crumbling Lab™ and eating baked beans on toast is getting a little old but at least we have our freedom.

Dancers face many of the same issues. They have very little in the way of real support, they are very poorly paid, have no health insurance, no job security and are treated like a commodity by more than a few dance makers. Short of eating beans on toast all the time and sharing a residence with big furry rodents, dancers are pretty much in the same boat we are.

All of which begs the question; Why are they being so polite?

Get Mad, Get Even

Here in TheLab™ we struggle to imagine what more this profession could possibly do to so comprehensively piss-off the very people who are required to make the thing work properly.

We're not talking about dishing dirt on dance companies or choreographers, unless that dirt happens to be something unethical or illegal. What we're talking about is openly voicing your concerns, frustration and well founded points that all too often this business is run with all the professionalism of a Butlin's talent competition.

When your local National Dance Agency is ignoring you for no other reason than the Artistic Director is acting like a buffoon then kick up a fuss. If Arts Council England, or any other funding bureaucracy for that matter, is asking you to supply the same information over and over again, simply to justify their existence, then raise hell about it.

If you actually have a job and the teaching programme is a piece of worthless, condescending trash, then politely point out the situation and suggest that those responsible change their strategy.

When a dance company is holding secret auditions in secret places and then fails to let you know whether or not you actually got that low paid job in their particularly crap piece of work then do tell. Don't just tell us, tell them, tell their funding providers, tell other dancers.

There are a thousand more issues we could point out, but you get the picture.

You're not causing a ruckus out of spite, you're causing a ruckus because the problems mentioned above are all too real and chip away at the resilience you need to keep doing the job. Allowing the cretins who make your life a misery to get away with the crime scot free is only going to make things, wait for it, worse!

Repercussions

Apparently, as Article19 has learned, nobody likes a "complainer". Being liked however is slightly overrated and is not a reliable indicator of respect or having any actual skill or talent.

Raising your voice may well bring you some unwanted attention and there might be some repercussions from the subject of you ire. But what you have to ask yourself is this; What can "they" really do to you?

The arts is not a spy novel. You're not going to get "rubbed out" by some faceless henchman from ACE and there probably isn't a wide reaching conspiracy to keep the little guy down and mess up the career of anybody who dares to voice an opposing opinion.

We know this because to do so would require a level of operational sophistication that is simply beyond Arts Council England, Scottish Arts Council or the others. We did it again, we just called them stupid and the world keeps on turning.

Sure, calling out a dance company for their shortcomings will almost certainly mean you won't ever work for them again. But why would you want to?

We also shouldn't think of raising issues as nothing more than a road to confrontation. Organisations and individuals alike do not enjoy being told they are wrong or have problems but most of the time a little tough love is the only way to make them listen.

Real debate and discussion go hand in hand with practical problem solving and the arts has more than its fair share of practical problems to solve.

The people in charge need to be pulled out of their comfort zone and the only way that is going to happen is if dancers make them really, really uncomfortable.

[ top image by Paul Morley ]

by Neil Nisbet

If the press hacks are to be believed dance is, once again, undergoing a resurgence of popularity with the advent of numerous 'reality' television shows featuring dance as their premise that have appeared on a number of networks, worldwide over the last few years.

We have dance shows featuring famous people, dance shows featuring hopeless people, we even have dance shows on ice, with famous and hopeless people. If the hacks are to be believed, these shows are causing an upswing in the popularity of dance across the world. Finally, this art form is getting some global attention!

It's not really the kind of attention you want though, is it?

You Think You Can Dance?

Two of the most popular shows, in the USA at least, are 'Dancing with the Stars' and 'So You Think You Can Dance?' For this particular editorial let's focus on 'So You Think You Can Dance?' and see just how much these shows are actually about, you know, dance!

If you have never seen this particular cultural revolution then allow me to enlighten you. The basic premise is this. Thousands of dancers, both amateur and professional, attend open auditions in various US states. They perform a one minute solo, choreographed by the dancer, followed by a short discussion with the three judges (Nigel Lythgoe, Mary Murphy and a random "Guest Judge").

The judges will either wax lyrical about the abilities of the dancer or go into "cruel bastard" mode and humiliate the poor unfortunate who was ill advised enough to put themselves through this particular meat grinder.

Within these two minute "audition" segments we have the first real problem with the show. It is inevitable that if you put trained, professional dancers alongside an obviously overweight young woman with no experience whatsoever, as was the case for one segment, the results will be, to put it mildly, catastrophic.

At no point does anyone connected to the programme make a reasoned judgment and say "no" when it will be blatantly obvious from reading their application information that they have little to no experience in the field and shouldn't be allowed within a mile of the stage or the cameras.

Of course; the reason they are allowed onto the stage is to create cannon fodder for the television audience to laugh at and nothing more. These particular contestants also provide easy prey for the judges, many of whom appear to have created "choreography" for Britney Spears.

Every single scene of the show is edited to within an inch of its life to maximise the emotional pain being inflicted upon the unwary victims.

Even after they leave the stage the participants are not left alone. One girl, following an on stage confrontation with the judges where she was, metaphorically, beaten to a pulp, was followed into an elevator, as she cried her eyes out, by a camera operator to further compound her pain and humiliation.

Further Down The Line

Following the audition stage the show moves to Las Vegas, of all places, where the ranks of dancers are put through another round of auditions under the guise of a call back process where they are whittled down to the final twenty performers.

This entire process takes about four episodes to complete, each episode is one hour long. The remaining twenty episodes of the show are used to reduce the number of dancers as slowly as possible, using a combination of judges decisions and phone voting. The eventual winner receives a $250,000 cash prize (before taxes) and a 200 word mention on the news.

The exploitative antics in evidence with this programme should come as no surprise when you look at who the creators are.

Nigel Lythgoe is a judge/producer who worked his way up through the ranks of television after a stint as the choreographer on the Muppet Show (I'm not making this up!) He is also a former producer of such television highlights as Gladiators, Pop Idol and Blind Date along with the British version of Survivor.

Simon Fuller, another Executive Producer, is the man behind making the Spice Girls and S Club 7 popular and more recently brokered deals for football "star" David Beckham. There have been many accusations over the years that Mr Fuller raked in millions from his music endeavours while the actual protagonists received relatively little in the way of financial reward. Accusations that he has denied.

Together they are the co-creators of an entire genre of reality fame, including the most popular of them all 'American Idol'.

The prize money on offer to the winner of 'So You Think You Can Dance' and the meager production cost associated with making the show, and others like it, are nothing compared to the millions in advertising, endorsement and phone-in revenue generated for the broadcaster (in this case Fox Television) and the production companies.

Over the last six years American Idol alone has generated revenues estimated to be in the region of (US)$2.5Billion. The ultimate prize for those taking part, if they win, is a small price to pay for producers.

No matter the source material of the show, the same mantra applies. Big money for the producers, small reward for the participants.

What About The Dance?

Supporters of these programmes argue that they place dance front and center in the minds of those who watch and also encourage them to go out and participate in dance classes. There is little evidence to support these claims however.

What about the on screen quality of the choreography and dancing you say?

In the latter stages of the season, viewers are often treated to some of the most ham fisted attempts at dance making you could possibly imagine. While it is obvious that the dancers have a great deal of skill the limitations of the format and the desire to show off big moves often leaves artistic integrity in the gutter.

Someone really needs to point out to these guys that grasping your heart, flinging your head back and pumping your fists into the air does not equate to an illustration of emotion!

Not a piece of dance gets on the stage without split jumps, box splits, developpe's or jazz pirouettes being thrown in, irrespective of the theme. The girls are usually in nothing but hot pants and bras and everybody has bright white teeth and shiny lip balm, even the judges. We breathlessly await the first instance of "jazz hands"!

This show is a primary school dance competition in High Definition with all the artistic sophistication of YouTube, Big Brother and the Crazy Frog ring tone combined.

'So You Think You Can Dance?' and its ilk are exercises, initially, in humiliation for those clearly deluded enough to go on national television in the mistaken belief they stand a chance of progressing. The viewing public look on as if rubber necking a pile up on the motorway.

Later in the season the show degenerates further into pantomime as the judges play the bad guy to the dancer's Lone Ranger. The television audience, just as culpable as everybody else in this sham, respond by jeering at the bad guys and voting for their favourite for no other reason than to prove the judges wrong. As we all know, when it comes to a coherent "group think" television audiences that make phone votes really do know what's best!

Overall, a genre of television has created the desire to obtain fame and fortune, and perhaps notoriety, over excelling in your chosen profession with integrity, diligence and a bit of class.

Trash!

Such programming should not be held up as a shining beacon of hope for this profession because it allegedly gets people to attend dance classes. These shows should be treated with contempt and mocked for being the exploitative, ill conceived trash that they are.

By allowing professional and untrained dancers to audition the producers of this programme are universally deriding the entire profession as one that doesn't require years to master and more years to hone to a fine point. You can just show up, do some moves and hey presto you're in! Except you're not because the professionals will make you look stupid.

Using the reasoning of this programme, if a job opens up for a specialist in rocket propulsion at NASA then I should feel free to apply. I know nothing about jet propulsion of course and any rocket I designed would explode immediately and many would be killed in the fireball. That hardly matters though because the interview would be hilarious as I mangled my way through an explanation of rocket fuel and how it will go boom when it's mixed with matches.

Why not make that into a TV show? They could call it 'So You Think You Know Astrophysics' and it would encourage countless thousands of people to go to university and study rocket science. Except it wouldn't, would it?

Dance is not just something you can show up and "do". You can if you're going to a wedding but not if you're going to do it in front of other people and ask them to pay money for the privilege of watching you. So why do we let it go when Fox or the BBC say it's ok?

The producers, viewers and participants share the blame in equal measure but ultimately the viewers have the power.

If you don't watch they will stop making them in a heart beat. If you want good dance goto the theatre. If you want this profession to have some integrity stop selling it down the river because Messrs. Fuller and Lythgoe wave a dollar bill in front of your face.

[ Photo by Andy Brown ]