Alberto Vilar whom the Guardian is reporting has made over US$200 million in donations to the arts around the world is under threat of having his name removed from the Vilar Floral Hall at the Royal Opera House (ROH), named for him following written agreements, if he fails to make further payments to the London theatre. It is reported that his donations to the opera house so far have topped £4million.

The ROH would neither confirm nor deny that the hall will be renamed if the donations are not made.

Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas says in today's Guardian;

"the Floral Hall was named the Vilar Floral Hall as part of the agreement made in September 1999 that Alberto Vilar would pay £10m towards the Royal Opera House development appeal ... However, he has consistently failed to reach these new deadlines, and in doing so is in breach of all agreements."

Mr Vilar's business is reportedly in financial trouble and the man himself is facing allegations of fraud in the United States. In fact CNN reported in May that Mr Vilar was incarcerated in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York as he was unable to pay the US$10 million bond to secure bail. It therefore seems unlikely that he will be making the additional payments to the ROH slush fund. His current whereabouts could not easily be determined.

ROH is known to the general public as the home of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera. They are known to the arts world for spending staggering amounts of money, none of which is their own, on producing nothing that is of much interest to the vast majority of people in the UK.

This chap is going to take hours, literally, to walk from one side of the bridge to the other and then back again. Mr Fishof will begin at 8AM which is during rush hour in one of the most people congested cities in the world. Londoners are expected to be thrilled at the presence of a slow moving "multi disciplinary artist" on the bridge as they make their way to whatever it is people in London do for a living.

Some local wags may suggest he tries the feat of endurance in a car because it would take a lot longer than walking it very slowly!

If you thought walking across a bridge could be done without financial assistance then you would be wrong. The website for this 'art' features logos for no less than 8 funding partners once of which is, of course, Arts Council England!

If you wish to see this work in action then a video demonstration is available on the website. You couldn't make this stuff up, you really couldn't!

[ link ] Slow Walk Website

Capture is Arts Council England's valiant (we're being generous here) attempt at film making with dance as the central focus. Previous efforts have been risible but always approach things with a fresh mind we say.

These particular offerings will be installations rather than straight dance films which you can sit down and watch with your popcorn. Look at it as an afternoon in an art gallery rather than a night in the Odeon!

The press info states this about one of the works on show:

"Aureole explores themes of pregnancy and identity. The installation will combine a large scale video projection and features an 8-speaker audio composition. This highly praised piece of work was devised by filmmaker Katy Connor who has worked on a wide variety of film and television programmes for Channel 4 and the BBC"

We should have some footage to show you from this event next week so stay tuned.

For more information call the Patrick Centre on 0121 689 3040

This week the agency launched a new site to deliver information and feedback about their services and opportunities to the dance industry. Considering the amount of time that has elapsed it seems unlikely that the redesign was prompted by our review. If was then hats off to the folks at SED for responding with the physical prowess of a cardboard box.

The new site, although nothing to shout too loud about, is a vast improvement over the old one. Featuring content you can actually read and navigation that works is always a good start in developing an online presence. In design terms it is also a lot smarter than before, albeit a little to 'bank like' for our tastes.

You can find the new site by clicking on the link below.

[ LINK ] SED Website

Capture is Arts Council England's valiant (we're being generous here) attempt at film making with dance as the central focus. Previous efforts have been risible but always approach things with a fresh mind we say.

These particular offerings will be installations rather than straight dance films which you can sit down and watch with your popcorn. Look at it as an afternoon in an art gallery rather than a night in the Odeon!

The press info states this about one of the works on show:

"Aureole explores themes of pregnancy and identity. The installation will combine a large scale video projection and features an 8-speaker audio composition. This highly praised piece of work was devised by filmmaker Katy Connor who has worked on a wide variety of film and television programmes for Channel 4 and the BBC"

We should have some footage to show you from this event next week so stay tuned.

For more information call the Patrick Centre on 0121 689 3040

We have been promised images and even some video to plot her progress form nothing to something in the dance making stakes.

You can read the blog by clicking on Lucy's name over to the right.

The press release tells us this;

"The Youth Dance Academy aims to provide a dance programme for a highly diverse range of children and young people which also offers a real progression route. The proposed project intends to create an infrastructure, which coordinates and links projects and support mechanisms within the youth dance sector."

Here in the bitter north there has been an veritable avalanche of dance academies being set up for young people (there is one other Academy, hardly an avalanche! Ed!)

Essentially an Academy is a big step forward from the usual set up of youth oriented projects. Dancers normally have to audition for a place and be very committed to the project in order to stay a member of the company/group.

Tees Valley Dance are a soon to be independent dance company based in Stockton and if you are a professional dancer interested in working for them, and taking part in the academy then check our audition pages for more information.

You may or may not know that Middlesbrough was the inspiration for the opening sequence in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner movie! Don't let that put you off though as a dancer you will be mostly working inside away from the flame towers and flying cars!

Farooq Chaudhry, the company's producer told Article19 that the reasons for holding the audition overseas were;

"Akram Khan is extremely busy in rehearsals at the moment and is only able to give one weekend of his time to the audition process. With this limitation in mind we decided that to make the process accessible to the whole of Europe that it would best be held at the European hub of Brussels.

Dancers outside of London will find it cheaper to travel and stay in Brussels than to spend a weekend in London. Train and flights to Brussels is extremely cheap nowadays (less than British Rail) and hotels in Brussels can be found for around 50 euros."

Following our research however we discovered this to be far from the truth. If we used a dancer living in Newcastle upon Tyne as an example, it's where Article19 is based, we discovered it was much cheaper to travel from here to London and stay overnight than to either fly or travel by Eurostar to Brussels. Train fair plus accommodation in London would cost just £90 if booked far enough in advance whereas air travel and train travel plus accommodation would cost £196 and £184 respectively. Costs would rise for all destinations if booking closer to the event.

We also raised the issue of whether or not a contemporary dance company funded by Arts Council England should be auditioning overseas in the first place to which Mr Chaudry responded;

"Absolutely not! Since our company was founded in August 2000 our subsidy from the UK has never exceeded more than 25% of our turnover. This in turn reflects the breakdown of activity that we do both in the UK and abroad. I believe that this gives us the right to determine where we hold our auditions as long as they are accessible to UK dancers."

Indeed for the year 2003/2004 the company did apply for £98,235 from ACE and production and touring costs far exceeded this amount. However the funding from ACE is used to actually create the work for touring that generates that income stream. What this means is, no funding from ACE no work to tour with. Currently Akram Khan Dance Company receives £180,000 under ACE's 3 year funding agreement for Regularly Funded Organisations.

Mikel Aristegui was diagnosed with Cellulitis which the Mayo Clinic describes as;

"...a potentially serious bacterial infection of your skin. It appears as a swollen, red area of skin that feels hot and tender, and it may spread rapidly.

Skin on the lower legs or face is most commonly affected by this infection, though cellulitis can occur on any part of your skin. The infection may only be superficial, but it may also affect the tissues underlying your skin and can spread to your lymph nodes and bloodstream.

Left untreated, the spreading bacterial infection may rapidly turn into a life-threatening condition. That's why it's important to recognize the signs and symptoms of cellulitis and to seek immediate medical attention if they occur."

Mr Arisregui is expected to make a full recovery and the company will premiere the new work in the UK at Warwick Arts Centre on May 28th and 29th.

When calling ACE's central switchboard last week we were immediately informed that should we wish to contact the dance dept. we should do so by email. Lab members were somewhat perplexed since the nature of the call had not even been explained. The switchboard supervisor admitted when pressed for further details that the dance dept. had put a block on any calls from Article19 being put through.

To date the dept. has refused to answer question regarding ACE employees apparently misleading Article19 on the existence of press material for their Capture series of films and missing Freedom of Information Act requests.

Alex Holdaway, press officer for ACE in London told us via email that;

"As with most organisations, the usual practice at the Arts Council is that all media enquiries are directed to our press offices, any emails sent to Rebecca Dawson or any one else in the dance department would be forwarded to me or my colleagues in the relevant regional office. We are unable to provide a cuttings service but obviously, it is the press office that is like to hold cuttings rather than the art form departments and if we can we will of course be happy to help."

Ms Holdaway did not respond to the specific points on ACE misleading Article19 or the missing FOIA requests.

To date the dance dept. has not replied to numerous request by email for information or several phone messages to answer specific points.

While contemporary dance companies received modest increases in their funding for the next three years and a couple of companies lost their funding altogether the classical companies received substantial increases to their already well funded coffers.

It has now emerged that ACE has been propping up ENB for some time as the company suffers a drop in audience numbers and the recent loss of its artistic director Mats Skoog.

The Independent reports;

"For the past two years, the Arts Council has been quietly advancing £750,000-£800,000 of the following year's grant; ENB faced insolvency last year, and the ACE had to decide whether to let it go down or not. The £2.3 million package is a vote in ENB's future."

The £2.3million is from ACE's so-called "stabilisation fund" although many in the arts have another name for the scheme which at this hour of the day is un-publishable. The stabilisation fund was introduced years ago in a desperate attempt to save many large scale companies that were floundering. The scheme was heavily criticised for appearing to endorse poor management and incompetence in the large scale organisations in the UK almost all of which at the time had substantial deficits.

English National Opera and Royal Opera House have received substantial amounts of money from this fund in the past.

As we highlighted in our recent editorial on the ACE funding review, in the dance world they are pleading poverty whilst simultaneously providing large funding increases to big ballet and contemporary dance continues to struggle.

[ link ] The Telegraph Piece

According to the Broadcast Audience Research Board (BARB) the top rated show on BBC4 for the week ending 20th March had an estimated 200,000 viewers and the 10th rated show pulled in just 90,000. This is for the same week the Dance Film Academy bowed on the channel and it does not feature in the top 10.

A BBC4 spokeswoman was quick to point out that BARB'S audience figures when the projected audience is below 250,000 are somewhat unreliable. However the BBC is quick to champion the audience figures for shows like Doctor Who and Eastenders as being completely reliable in every respect and they are collected in exactly the same way. BBC news was gloating about the 9.9 million rating for the new Doctor Who series that premiered last week on the main channel.

The BBC were also keen to emphasise that programming is not just about getting ratings particularly not on the lesser know digital channels such as BBC4. While it is commendable that the BBC is willing to make risky shows it is not commendable that they are shunted to BBC4 and advertised so poorly that almost nobody watches them.

If contemporary dance is to become more popular then well made exciting television programming is the perfect way to accomplish that goal. On this front the BBC has failed miserably and the program makers and the public have been let down.

When you are exposing contemporary dance to a potential audience of 30-40 million people you expect some good exposure. Less than 100,000 is an embarrassing flop by any standards and once again dance is humiliated when placed onto a national platform.

During a routine Freedom of Information request to the Pentagon in Washington DC regarding an unrelated matter several documents came to light highlighting Hewitt's involvement in a covert operation in the late 70's and early 80's throughout many European cities. The ACE front man was employed by MI6 and seconded to the US intelligence giant for up to 10 years from 1976 to 1986.

In a telephone conversation Hibb explained that the nature of the operation;

"Appeared to be centered around persuading young artistic radicals to subvert their local governments and destabilize their day to day operations in order to provide the USA and the UK with certain advantages. Although what the advantages were are not made clear in the documents".

Hibb went on to explain that he had no idea who Hewitt was and it took several hours of searching on the Internet before arriving at the conclusion that the Peter Hewitt at ACE and the Hewitt code-named, somewhat bizarrely, as 'Wombat" were in fact one in the same. The Tribune's front page piece reports that a 'handler' of Hewitts said he was "..very keen about the work and longed for a more active role in the agency."

ACE in London did not immediately respond when asked for comment about their Chief Executives history in counter intelligence. Mr Hewitt or Wombat as he may prefer to be known remains unavailable at present.

Because of the time difference the early edition of the Tribune has not yet been published but an advance PDF version of todays front page is available at the link below. Full publication on the Tribunes website will follow at about 3pm UK time.

[ link ] Tribune Front Page PDF (needs Acrobat)

(Yes this was a joke but we are leaving it here for posterity)

Speaking in the Radio Times and reported in The Guardian the 72 old actor and star of film classic Lawrence of Arabia, went on in great detail about the paucity of new writing talent in the British theatre scene. To be honest though we preferred him in the long forgotten comedy High Spirits with Steve Guttenburg! (you're fired, Ed!) There is nothing like a comedy ghost movie! (you're fired again! Ed!)

With regard to young actors he stated;

"There are always promising young actors, and today the sensible ones fuck off from what calls itself 'the theatre' as soon as they can because it's such badly done shit."

Andrew Leigh, formerly of the Old Vic, said O'Toole's comments "did not warrant a detailed response". We have no idea who he is but that sounds just like the kind of thing some old boy from the Old Vic probably would say.

Here in the Lab we have little or no idea about theatre and could probably care less about the lack of new talent in the writing stakes but we do like his style. O'Toole that is not the boring guy from the Old Vic.

We do have a slight problem with Mr O'Toole saying that young actors would be better off in Film and Television, especially in the UK. We have to wonder if he has ever seen Eastenders, Casualty or any British film made in the last 20 years!