Dance City, one of the UK’s National Dance Agencies, is running a new project to try and get ‘young people’ (were not allowed to call them kids anymore) aged between 11-18 years old involved in the running of their facility for a year.
We will bypass the obvious jokes about Dance City being run by children, so what else is new? (you just did it!! Ed!) and probe deeper into this child/teen idea/knowledge sucking programme.
DC’s website has a form asking some basic questions to see what’s ‘up with the kids’ and since everybody in TheLab™ is over 18, in body if not in mind, we can only offer our feedback here in the name of humour, sarcasm and brutal honesty. There are no indications when, if ever, this project will get going.
Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea – WHY?
It’s a great idea but why not have two programmes whereby you take advice from grown ups with experience? Mind you, adults might get shirty and demand their advice is actually acted upon!
Would it work? Well to a certain degree yes because in a lot of ways you’re on the same level as a 12 year old!
What do you think young people would get out of a project like this? Probably a very strong sense that the last thing they ever want to do with their life is move into dance administration. On the other hand if they want to become dancers you will be providing them with a lot of precious intel they can use to overthrow your regime when they graduate.
What problems do you think we face? Attempting to save a profession facing overwhelming odds in the face of an apathetic public, inert government, stone age communications and a complete lack of progressive thinking on every level and the obvious lack of free ice cream in this place!!
There are some, as yet unsubstantiated, rumours that dance makers are preparing to ‘buy’ the opinions of these young instigators with Xbox games and chocolate bars by the truckload, the dance community declined to comment.
