Un-Hinged!
Update: 02/09/10 A recording of the show is online for those of you inclined enough to listen. [ Iconoclasts on Radio 4 ]
It had to happen eventually. Some crazy person has invited our ever so slightly un-hinged Editor to appear on a live radio show debating the merits or otherwise of arts subsidy with some damn fool person who would like to see all arts funding abolished! (Stop laughing at the back!)
The nutter person in question is Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle and he will be making his case with a six minute speech before being mercilessly eviscerated politely debated by our man and two other people, the names of whom escape us at the time of writing.
Presumably the irony of presenting this argument on a publicly subsidised radio station has not escaped Mr Pollard.
When TheImp heard of Mr Pollard's idea he had to be tranquillised and confined to his cage/office for several days. We really wanted him to go instead but we couldn't get the necessary permits.
If you want to join in the bun fight then the programme, 'Iconoclasts', is on BBC Radio 4, tomorrow (September 1), at 8pm. If you don't have a radio then you can listen online via the BBC website but only if you are in the UK thanks to some damn fool copyright nonsense.
The show will also be available on the iPlayer for 10 days after it goes on the air.
On The Road
Autumn is fast approaching, well, it's approaching at the same speed as every other season but a little hyperbole never hurt a news story so let's move on. With autumn comes the autumn touring schedule of many a dance company with works new and almost new available for your perusal in a theatre near you.
Candoco Dance Company
Kick of the second part of their tour of 'Renditions' a new triple bill of work from Emanuel Gat with 'In Translation', Wendy Houstoun's 'Imperfect Storm' and Sarah Michelson bringing up the rear with 'The Hangman'.
This tour brings a lot of dance, a bit of theatre and a side serving of crazy, so something for everybody. Starting at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness on September 21 then touring throughout the winter including dates in Europe and beyond.
Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company
A mix of the new and the old for these dancesmiths with 'Faultline' being the old(ish) work and 'Bruise Blood' being the new work from one of the UK's longest serving dance makers. Their cold weather dancing kicks off in Europe with a show at Dansens Hus in Stockholm, Sweden on October 8 and 9. Then it's back to the UK for a show at the The Castle Theatre in Wellingborough on October 13. Touring continues after that.
Jasmin Vardimon Company
Everybody's favourite hard core dance maker is coming out with a brand new work that that defies spelling out properly unless you have a really old calculator. '7734' looks like an odd name for a piece but, as mentioned, tap it out on a calculator and look at it backwards (and upside down) and all is revealed. Premieres on September 23 at the Brighton Dome with national and international touring to follow.
Motionhouse Dance Theatre
Based in Middle England (Warwick to be less than precise) the purveyors of all that is physical and theatre bring 'Scattered' back to life along with their mini satellite shows 'Underground', 'Chaser' and 'Cascade'. The little one s are usually free, the big one is not so no sneaking in without a ticket! 'Scattered' takes to the stage on September 15 at Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury and then continues touring.
Hofesh Shechter [Dance Company]
The boy wonder is back, again, with a new work, entitled 'Political Mother' featuring live music and much more of the Israeli dance makers signature movement style. Touring resumes at the Biennale De La Danse De Lyon, in France on September 10-12. The first new UK show is at the somewhat less glamourously titled South Hill Park in Bracknell on September 20. UK and international touring continues after that.
Of course this is just a drop in the bucket of the new touring throughout the cold winter months with many companies new and old plying there wares for you to see. Keep your eyes peeled for more news and maybe some new video!
An Urban Move
Amid all this political talk and Jeremy "grim reaper" Hunt trying very hard to undo 15 years of progress there is still a lot of arts activity going on, especially in the dance world.
The summer months are usually quiet as most of the touring companies are sleeping and storing up their energy for the autumn season.
Not so in Manchester however as Urban Moves makes ready for its biannual outing of outdoor dancing that is Urban Moves.
Every single show is outdoors which might seem a little bit crazy in this country but what the hell, let's go for the burn, or the rain, whichever comes first.
Urban Moves features a number of companies from all over Europe including, in no particular order, Circodelia (Spain), Company Decalage (UK), Etant Donne (France), Motionhouse (UK), Gravity and Levity (UK) and a whole lot more.
The festival runs for three days from Friday 23rd of July and everything, absolutely everything, is completely free, this is a one time offer.
Article19 will be in attendance and we're hoping to bring you some video from the festival real soon.
More details on the Urban Moves website.
News Round for July(ish)
We don't really do a lot of "info" news here in TheLab™ but let's do a quick round up of the latest snippets of information that might just be of some use to you, our dear readers!
Impulstanz
The orgy of dance madness in Vienna gets under way on the 15th of July and runs for a whole month through to August 15. If you're looking for pure, accessible dance work then this festival is probably not for you, it's all very hardcore and very edgy.
Lest you be unfamiliar with this annual dance bun fight then allow us to enlighten you. The festival essentially has three strands to it. Workshops, live performances and a mini festival for new dance makers called '8:Tension'.
Workshops cover everything from jazz to contact improvisation and all take place at old military base in central Vienna. If you've ever taken part in a workshop and struggled to actually get moving because of a lack of space then you will not have that problem in Vienna, trust us on that one.
The main dance festival includes performances from Ultima Vez, Alain Patel, David Zambrano and more than 20 others. Check the Impulstanz website for more details.
Blank Canvas
If you're a dance maker and looking for a way to practice your craft then 'Blank Canvas' may be your thing. The residency programme is run by The Firkin Crane theatre in Cork, Ireland. Deadline for applications is September 30th.
BLANK CANVAS is a professional dance residency programme open to professional dance artists already making their career in dance. The residency provides time and space to research, develop and explore creative ideas without emphasis on a finished production. BLANK CANVAS allows the creative process to be given breath in ways which suit each artist's needs.
Cloud Dance Festival
This short festival runs from July 16-18 at the Cohrane Theatre in London (the theatre is located on the campus of University of the Arts London. Much like 8:Tension in Vienna this festival for new dance makers and a few familiar faces including; Antique Dances
Pair Dance, Sillander & Pascual, Slanjayvah Danza and Sol Dans.
The work on each night is presented as a single performance lasting just over 2 hours so bring your hot chocolate and some marshmallows. More information on their website.
Half A Percent
Arts Council England, the funding monolith that provides core funding for thousands of arts organisation across England, has announced that the vast majority of their "clients" will receive a cut of just 0.5% from their current financial year budget.
Organisations as large as The Royal Opera House will lose just over £140,000 and dance companies, such as Motionhouse and Candoco, will lose in the region of £1,500 depending on their individual budgets.
The cuts will affect all regularly funded organisations (RFO's).
Although £1,500 may not seem like a lot the budgets for smaller organisations are very tightly controlled and are almost certainly allocated at the start of the financial year so there's going to be some hurt.
The cuts will come into effect next year when the RFO's receive their final payments for this financial year.
£19Million Hole
Updated : 10.34 am 26 May 2010, additional information from DCMS and ACE.
Updated : 6.18pm 25 May 2010, additional information from ACE.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport* (DCMS) has instructed Arts Council England (ACE) to make £19 Million in savings over the current financial year.
ACE immediately cried foul because other departments within the DCMS were only required to cut 3% and ACE was told to cut 4%. In a press release, from May 24th, Chair of ACE Liz Forgan said;
"We all knew this year would be tough. We do not understand why we have received a higher percentage cut than other DCMS funded bodies."
A quick phone call to the DCMS today cleared that up with a spokesperson telling Article19 that ACE has, what they describe as, "historical reserves" to tap into to the tune of £18Million so basically ACE could stomach a larger cut than everybody else.
ACE's communications people told Article19 however that many other DCMS funded bodies have reserves and they have not been requested to make additional cuts to their budgets.
During a follow up phone call the DCMS admitted that yes, all other organisations that come under their funding umbrella, like museums, have the same kind of reserves but these reserves are not from the same source.
DCMS say that ACE's reserves are government money and a museum's reserves (their example) would be derived from private donations and that the people making these donations would not want their money being used to plug shortfalls in government money.
The DCMS offered no evidence of the specific intent of individual museum donors and what they would expect their donations to be used for.
ACE disputes the assertion that their reserves are solely derived from government money and they also pointed out that their Trustees and the Charity Commission may take the same position as the DCMS. Using the reserves to make up central funding shortfalls is not what they should be used for.
DCMS is trying to cut £88Million from its' overall budget which includes shedding just £27Million from the more than £9.2Billion Olympics budget (which the government is on the hook for to the tune of £5.8Billion).
Although ACE mention their reserves in the press release they issued it seems curious that Ms Forgan did not simply ask the DCMS herself why the funding cuts were more excessive for the arts monolith. Again ACE informed us that the DCMS only officially told them the level of their cuts today, via a letter, and that press releases, from DCMS, went out yesterday evening after 6pm.
A common tactic when you don't want the press to pay too much attention to something is to "dump it out with the trash" either late at night or on a Friday because, so the theory goes, nobody is paying any attention and print deadline's have been missed.
ACE has told us that permission to use their reserves is not as straight forward as receiving permission from the DCMS alone. Since ACE holds charitable status they also need permission from their board of trustees and the Charities Commission before being allowed to use the funds.
The DCMS have confirmed to Article19 that if and when ACE asks to use some of their reserves to plug the funding hole then this permission will be given although it is not solely their decision to make. ACE have told us that they have made repeated requests to use these reserves in the past and these requests have always been denied.
Should the required permission and approval not be given by all concerned then DCMS say that the additional 1% (£5Million) funding cut still stands, reserves or no reserves.
ACE say that discussions about specifics with regard to the funding cuts are ongoing.
The new UK coalition government will be making changes as to how money from the National Lottery will be distributed among good causes. The DCMS anticipates an increase in funding of approximately £50Million by 2012/2013 for the arts which, should the increase actually materialise, wipe out the current cuts. There is no guarantee however that the government will not cut ACE's funding further over the next 12 months.
A complete spending review from the government is due this autumn
ACE expects to tell all RFO (Regularly Funded Organsisations) that will receive cuts to their funding by June 22nd at the latest.
Insurance
If professional dancers do one thing a lot, apart from rehearsals and touring, it's teaching and if you teach you need insurance, liability insurance.
Should you find yourself teaching a large group of "disadvantaged" young people and an unruly heard of rhino's charge in and start tearing up the place then liability insurance will keep you covered against the ensuing outrage from said young folks parents.
The Foundation for Community Dance has just announced a revised membership deal whereby you, as a member, will receive £10Million pounds worth of protection, legal expense coverage and more should the worst happen all for the reasonable sum of £65.
The FCD say this much;
"Professional Membership is open to all individuals and organisations in the UK involved in community and participatory dance at a professional level. This scheme is designed for dance artists, dance teachers, dance organisations, dance companies, and arts organisations that provide community and participatory dance - either as a main focus or as part of a broader portfolio of work in dance/the arts."
Hit up the link below for more information, get yourself covered and start making plans for your new workshop series "Running With Scissors Through a Petrol Station Whilst On Fire For Beginners!"* Don't worry, you're covered!
*We should point out that it's the participants who are on fire, not the petrol station, because that would be crazy!
Upgrades
In our continuing quest to bring you the very "best dance video on the web" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink! Ed!) we have been running some upgrades in the background on some of our older video material.
What was great a few years ago is, to be frank, looking a bit rough around the edges today. Over the last few years computer screens have gotten larger (on desktops and laptops), screen resolution has improved dramatically, broadband is so fast it's out of control and the computers themselves are much more powerful and can handle bigger and better video.
In recognition of this we've been going through the archives and upgrading older video using better compression technology, larger video player size and newer, less intrusive graphics.
The upgrades will also mean that the videos will work seamlessly on iPhone's and iPod Touch's and other smart phones and web enabled devices, we can get the videos onto our podcast channel and our Vimeo channel so you can share them directly through Facebook and your own website, if you have one!
The videos updated so far are:
[ Jonathan Lunn 'Self Assembly' ]
[ IBM 401 A Users Manual ]
[ Motionhouse 'Perfect' ]
[ Jasmin Vardimon Company 'Park' ]
[ Phoenix Dance Theatre 'See Blue Through' ]
[ Shobana Jeyasingh 'Faultline' ]
[ Hofesh Shechter 'Uprising' ]
[ Ultima Vez 'Spiegel' ]
[ Jasmin Vardimon Company 'Lullaby' ]
[ Candoco 'And who shall go to the ball' ]
Coming soon will be upgrades to, Jasmin Vardimon Company 'Justitia', Diversions 'Chase The Glowing Hours with Flying Feet', Siobhan Davies 'Birdsong', Scottish Dance Theatre 'No Stronger Than a Flower', and Charles Linehan 'Happy Days'.
If your particular favourite is not on the list then let us know and we'll see if we can upgrade it. This is a slow process however so it will take a couple of weeks.
Ahead of the Curve
Starting on March 2nd the National Dance Network, which used to be ANDA, will kick start a national tour of new dance companies called 'Dance 3'.
We'll spare you the press blurb but essentially the touring programme gives a performance platform, outside of London (for the most part), to several new dance makers all trying to make their mark on the wacky world of dance.
Ok, some of the dance makers aren't that new, in fact they've been making work for ages but let's celebrate the fact that the powers that be decided to do something a little more ambitious for these guys.
The 29 stop tour will feature work by Claire Cunningham & Jose Agudo, Tom Dale, Laïla Diallo, Heather Eddington, Darren Ellis, Mickael Marso Riviere, Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Tanja Råman, Douglas Thorpe and Ben Wright. Many of whom you are probably familiar with.
You can get more details on the Dance 3 website and even watch some video, albeit poorly formatted and in very low quality.
Depending on your take on what is and is not interesting a certain dance publication suggested the National Dance Agencies should try something just like this;
"The National Dance Agency Network would appear to be the best way forward for developing a post-Resolution touring structure for new companies that would enable them to reach a wider audience and tickle the artistic palettes of more than just the London crowd."
The only problem? We said that five years ago!
[ Dance 3 ]
[ 'Resolution Resolution' ]
nb: Keeping our recent piece 'Self Interest' in mind, take a wild guess where you will find no mention of this project at all?
Diaghilev Booted from BDE
If Javier Du Frutos was annoyed that his work was kicked from BBC4 for being universally offensive to all mankind then his partners in crime, Wayne McGregor, Russell Maliphant and the other guy or going to be spitting teeth because BDE canned the whole show thanks to some male swans!
'In the Spirit of Diaghilev' featuring works by the above mentioned dance makers was set to take to the stage at British Dance Edition on February 6th. The show has been replaced by Mr Maliphant all by himself with a triple bill from his own company and the Cobosmika Company.
The reason given by DanceXchange, the hosts of BDE 2010, are as follows;
In the Spirit of Diaghilev consists of four separate works, with considerable technical requirements, the full extent of which has only emerged fairly recently given the newness of the production.BDE has been working to establish whether it was possible to stage the production in a way which was acceptable to all parties concerned in the context of limited technical time. This has not proven possible and, as such, we have taken the difficult decision to remove the show from the programme.
As explanations go it seems reasonable enough. If you look at the schedule for the Birmingham Hippodrome there are no shows at all for the 6 days prior to February 6th but AMP and 'Swan Lake' move in 2 days later. That show is full of giant sets so a 24 hour get in does seem implausible.
However, 'In the Spirit of Diaghilev' bowed in London on October 13th last year. It's not really that new so somebody should probably have checked the technical requirements beforehand and how that fitted with the get in time for 'Swan Lake' a show that's been around for several hundred years, or maybe it just seems that way.
Also, the universal disdain for the Du Frutos section of 'In the Spirit of Diaghilev' might have made the decision to can the whole show slightly less difficult than the statement above would have us believe.
We'll probably never know!
Update: 8 January 2010
DanceXchange the organisers of BDE 2010, have elaborated on the reasoning for canning the Diaghilev show. It turns out that prior to the show bowing on February 6th there is another "event" at the Birmingham Hippodrome that is not on general sale. What is this event of such hugely significant artistic importance than it has caused the cancellation of a show by four of Europe's most revered dance makers (if you believe the hype)?
ITV will be shooting a regional segment of 'Britain's Got Talent'.......
Professional dance dealt a near fatal blow to the sternum by Simon Cowell and some folks playing the spoons.
You couldn't make this stuff up!
