Another article dismissing UK dance training

[Pas de Quatre]

I take the point that these are just three choreographers. The wider question is: are the graduates of our contemporary dance schools getting paid work on the completion of their courses? I have noticed the Rambert has several dancers who have been professional ballet dancers for a few years before joining the company. In a related article it was mentioned that one of the schools mentioned (Laban?) took dancers from diverse dance backgrounds including 'community dance' backgrounds. I'm not sure what this is but I assume that it does not mean full-time vocational training or many years of intensive non-vocational training. Perhaps there is just too much for the schools to fit into three years particularly if, as alison says, there is an academic component to the courses.

 

If Laban didn't take take dancers from diverse backgrounds but limited themselves to those who were already trained, then there wouldn't be a Matthew Bourne! 

[2dancersmum]

I think the fact that it is just three choreographers is in fact very important and the fact that as Pas De Quatre says a lot of contemporary dance employment is on a project by project basis, rather than joining a full time company. Many of the contemporary companies in this country do take on apprentices, who often then join the company but these are all through the MA Courses at London Contemporary, Northern Contemporary, Laban. I think Hofesch is the exception as their apprenticeship is through open audition. So if you look at all the contemporary companies in the UK, you will find much larger numbers of UK trained dancers than these three choreographers suggest.

[Melody]

From Rowan's link, it looks as though this ties into the same issue we've talked about regarding ballet and also other performing arts and sports.

 

Britain tends to turn out fewer top-level participants in these areas than, say, America or some of the Asian countries, but the ones we do turn out tend to be very individual. We wouldn't expect to produce a bunch of Torvill and Deans, or Judi Denches or Derek Jacobis, or Margot Fonteyns, because people like that, with massive artistry and individuality as well as technique, aren't that easily come by. At least, that's been the case in the past, but it seems to have been changing over the last 20 years or so.

 

This is one reason I've been finding a lot of sports and performing arts rather less interesting these days than a few decades ago - it's sometimes hard to tell the individuals apart because they've gone through the system so young and concentrated so much on technique that they almost look like clones. I don't think you find the range of style and personality in tennis or ice skating or even acting that existed in the 1960s and 1970s, and although the technical standard is higher and the champions are younger, I find it far less interesting to watch.

 

It may be easier for choreographers to deal with performers who have a fantastic technique and don't need a lot of accommodation made for individual quirks of various sorts, but I'm not sure it's that much of an improvement. I'd hate to get to the point where we might as well be programming cyborgs to do a very difficult dance routine and getting the same result.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Melody

[Zacharovitti]

Totally agree with you melody

[Peanut68]

Melody - you put very well my own thought so this! I think you almost see so many identikit kids in class.....perfect turn out, perfect technique....but will any of their Romeo & Juliet performances make you cry down the line I wonder?

[Chassé]

http://dancetabs.com/2015/04/resignation-of-dance-uks-chair-farooq-chaudhry/

And the saga continues...

 

Although I'm slightly confused as I don't recall seeing any comments by Farooq Chaudhry in any of the articles I've read, am I missing something here? 

[Jan McNulty]

Well said Melody!

[aileen]

Well, one response to the Dancing Times letter from a student at one of the schools mentioned also wishes that there had been more rigour in the contemporary dance (and more ballet) and issues a plea that companies take a chance on graduates who are not yet 'company ready'.

[Pas de Quatre]

http://www.danceuk.org/conference/

 

The timing of the whole thing may possibly be geared to this conference which is taking place now!  The three original critics could have voiced their concerns directly to the schools and people concerned, and engaged in a productive debate, but they chose a splashy press release instead.  Why?  For publicity?  I must say if I were involved with allocation of Arts Council subsidies I would be looking at all this very carefully!

 

For graduates from these schools it is very hard to get employment. There are only about 12 - 15 places with companies as MA apprentices

and nearly all general auditions ask for 2 or 3 years professional experience before they will consider seeing you.  

[Pas de Quatre]

Chassée - Farooq Chaudhry is co-founder and company producer of the Akram Khan Company, so he would have been involved in the press release as according to the DT article it came from the company. 

[Chassé]

Chassée - Farooq Chaudhry is co-founder and company producer of the Akram Khan Company, so he would have been involved in the press release as according to the DT article it came from the company. 

 

Ah yes of course. Makes sense now!

 

Thanks Pas de Quatre 

[pas de chat]

And Tamara Rojo is not too keen on  how children are brought up,though I am not sure if she just means ballet students.............................

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32195063

What about a childhood?

[aileen]

Tamara Rojo is a famously hard worker. In an interview a few years ago she said, in relation to the 10,000 hours which are said to be needed to become really proficient in any field, that she had put in 20,000 hours. She also said that she was never the best student dancer (flexibility seemed to be an issue for her) but was always the most bloody-minded.

[Melody]

Well, one response to the Dancing Times letter from a student at one of the schools mentioned also wishes that there had been more rigour in the contemporary dance (and more ballet) and issues a plea that companies take a chance on graduates who are not yet 'company ready'.

I really like the comment from another person under that letter which says "I'd like to think that we train the whole person, not just an instrument."

 

I hope we're not at the point where choreographers are basically just looking for instruments.

[dramascientist]

Wow I wonder what they are looking for? From what I have seen the standard of training at these top schools is amazing, I am flabbergasted. Maybe if there was more fonding and supprt from the government for the arts, facilities and resources would be better and complement the excellent teaching at these institutions?

[aileen]

Well, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that I have found the response to the original press release dispiriting, not particularly here but on social media generally. Article 19 launched an absolutely vicious and, in my view, unwarranted attack on the three choreographers accusing them of bad faith and unprofessionalism. The press release coincided with a big dance conference and that must surely explain the timing as the subject of training was going to be discussed. There's very much a 'shoot the messenger' outlook in this country generally and this extends to dance training. I feel that there are complex questions to be asked about the purpose and priorities of dance training but if anyone raising his or head above the parapet is going to be subjected to vicious personal attacks then debate will be stifled which will probably have unfortunate consequences for students in the long run. Yes, they are just three choreographers (and perhaps they prefer a certain type of dancer which the UK does not turn out in great numbers) but one has to ask what their motivation for speaking out was. Were they coming under pressure from ACE or the schools because they were not taking on UK trained dancers? Were they just wanting to be controversial? Or, are they genuinely concerned? I don't know about Newsom. but the other two are, putting it crudely, sitting pretty and could have just kept quiet and opted for a quiet life.

[taximom]

Wow I wonder what they are looking for? From what I have seen the standard of training at these top schools is amazing, I am flabbergasted. Maybe if there was more fonding and supprt from the government for the arts, facilities and resources would be better and complement the excellent teaching at these institutions?

Students are generally on degree courses and fully funded through student finance. Certainly at LCDS the facilities are very good.

 

Heather

Aka Taximom

[taxi4ballet]

Cynic that I am, I can't help wondering whether certain choreographers (who receive Arts Council funding) have been asked why they don't employ more dancers whose training has also been paid for by the taxpayer... and are justifying themselves by calling the dancers' training into question?

 

it seems a bit of a daft situation to be in - dancers trained at public expense unable to find work, and publicly-funded companies not employing them...

 

Should the companies be recruiting home-grown talent first? They say they can't as the talent isn't there.

 

Are the schools providing the right training? They say they are, and it could be that the students lack motivation.

 

Do our young student dancers lack motivation? Well they are certainly talented enough, but will find it very hard to get a job and that could demoralise anyone, especially if they think that all their efforts could be for nothing.

 

It's a right merry-go-round isn't it?

 

Am I rambling....? Sorry!

[rowan]

One of the commentators under the original article (linked in Pas de Quatre's first post) says that the British dance school has three times more students than European counterparts, which raises the question, again, and unwelcome as it may be, of are we training too many dance students? It could explain why, proportionally, the success rates might not appear too great.

 

Another commentator suggests that the sole purpose of HE-level dance is not necessarily to develop dance performers, but to open up the worlds of choreography, dance administration, etc, as well as other things. There are myriads of university subjects that one can study that don't lead directly into a job, but do those students face the same criticism if they study philosophy or Ancient Greek and those subjects aren't directly involved in the students' later employment? Well, maybe they do!

[Pas de Quatre]

This is true, not all students are aiming to become performers.  At Laban the 3rd year undergraduates choose whether they wish to be marked as a performer, as a choreographer or as a teacher for their degree and part of their timetable will be tailored to their chosen area - whilst still taking many classes and rehearsing for the end of year show.

 

One of DD's best friends from childhood took a Law degree and her dream was to become a barrister, a very competetive field to enter.  She didn't find an opening and so had to rethink and now has a good job she enjoys in an unrelated field.  As Rowan says, many graduates jobs are not directly related to the subject they studied.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/young-dancer-category-finalists

 

Here is a link to the BBC's announcement of the finalists for Young Dancer of the year. I've put it here because in a paragraph towards the end of the text, it is announced that Akram Khan will not be judging the final due to unforeseen changes in his international performing schedule!

[Anon2]

Article on BBC News website (sorry can't do links) with news that Chauhdry has quit as chair of Dance UK after his comments last week regarding UK training. It seems there are conflicts between his role at Dance UK and Akram Khan.

[Melody]

Here's the link, Jane: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32302347

[Anon2]

Thank you Melody. Links used to be easy on old OS now can't see how to do them!

[Dance*is*life]

Farooq Chaudhry's comments are mentioned in the Standard article, by the way.  I think it boils down to what a choreographer/company director is looking for in his dancers and what suits his particular type of choreography.  Some modern companies seem less focused on technique and more on freedom of movement and expression, others expect both!  I saw an American modern dance company a year or so ago - they did a neo-classical pointe dance which was beautiful and then launched into a really wild contemporary piece that was mind boggling, so their training presumably encompasses both.  Perhaps that is what is lacking in the UK schools - a versatile training system that prepares the dancer for the different types of contemporary dance?   I am not familiar with the works of these three choreographers, but possibly what they are looking for to compliment their styles of choreography are dancers with less precise technique and more abandon and strength of movement.  It doesn't mean that other choreographers are looking for the same thing or that dancers trained in a certain way are necessarily looking to join the type of company that wouldn't want them anyway! 

[aileen]

The number of dancers being trained shouldn't affect the standard of the graduates, unless the schools are taking in students who are unsuitable just to make up the numbers. The students who want to move into choreography, arts admin etc won't be auditioning for companies as dancers and so they are not the ones being seen by Schechter and co. Interestingly, Khan and Schechter have now both created work on classically trained ballet dancers and Khan is due to create a new Giselle on ENB.

[alison]

There's very much a 'shoot the messenger' outlook in this country generally and this extends to dance training. I feel that there are complex questions to be asked about the purpose and priorities of dance training but if anyone raising his or head above the parapet is going to be subjected to vicious personal attacks then debate will be stifled which will probably have unfortunate consequences for students in the long run.

 

I'm afraid that comment applies to an awful lot of situations in this country - and probably elsewhere - aileen, not just dance

Debate?  What's that?  And social media, with its frequently knee-jerk reactions, is unfortunately a big contributor.

[Pas de Quatre]

I still maintain that if the three choreographers had really wanted a serious debate they could have raised their concerns at the four day Dance UK conference which took place from Thursday to Sunday last week. Their press release just before it feels to me like cheap personal publicity.

[aileen]

I don't think that and Schechter and Khan need any publicity. Schechter has a second commission for the ROH as well as his own company and apprenticeship scheme and Khan has been doing critically acclaimed work with one of the most famous ballerinas in the world, has his own company, is involved with the National Youth Dance Company and has a second commission for ENB following a critically acclaimed first commission which was performed at Glastonbury and shown on national television. It would have been easier for them to keep their mouths shut and go on quietly recruiting most of their dancers from abroad. Let's all go back to sleep now and leave things just as they are. I'm afraid that it's human and institutional nature not to change things unless someone from outside comes and tells you pretty bluntly that there need to be changes.

[taxi4ballet]

Maybe the recruitment policy of some organisations has been noticed and questioned, and they are concerned about losing arts funding if they don't employ more tax-payer trained dancers?

 

Maybe they didn't want this (contentious and possibly embarrassing issue) to be raised at the conference, and wanted to get their views in first?

 

Who knows, but the timing could be potentially be viewed as rather more than a coincidence...

[Melody]

I'm not sure about the issue with British companies using more taxpayer-trained dancers - if the government was going to complain about that, presumably it'd start with Royal Ballet and ENB, whose upper echelons are stuffed with foreign imports even if they have a largely British corps.

 

I wonder if these choreographers have tried to raise their concerns privately with the schools and got the brush-off, hence deciding that going public was the only real alternative. I hope this wasn't their avenue of first resort because it must be awfully demoralizing for the kids in those schools to have their training and their prospects dismissed so harshly in public.

 

It's also a shame that it's led to Farooq Chaudhry having to resign from his Dance UK position, although presumably he must have known from the start that it would be a possibility.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Melody

[aileen]

That is possible but I've never heard of arts organisations being subjected to quotas regarding recruitment. Would we want that? In relation to ballet companies, most people argue strongly that they want the best dancers recruited by the companies, wherever they have come from or trained. What evidence do you have that these choreographers have any kind of policy other than recruiting the dancers who they regard as most suitable for their companies?

[aileen]

Actually, I think that the biggest issue is the increasing reluctance of companies, both ballet and contemporary, to employ or engage new graduates.

[Melody]

Aileen, if you're talking to me, I don't have any evidence, I was just responding to the post above mine.