Dance Mapping - Arts Council England

• difficult to find affordable work at mid-scale
• getting the voice of the venues heard in the industry.
Perceptions of dance programming
Comments from promoters in the venue survey sample include the following unedited points:
• ‘There seems to be a gradual but evident dearth of quality contemporary dance for
the small scale. Although I welcome the new direction of dance theatre, especially for
venues with a theatre audience, as it introduces them to the exciting possibilities of
dance without being too weird and wonderful. I worry about the real contemporary
dance pieces not being made for the small scale as audiences are more reluctant to
take a chance on abstract work and venues can no longer afford to take risks and be
adventurous.’
• ‘Small venues need more help from dance agencies or Arts Council England
financially so they can put adventurous work into their programme.’
• ‘To harness the power of new technologies – to reflect the preoccupations of people
– to retain the experience of established artists and encourage the new at the same
time.’
• ‘Nurturing of choreographic talent supporting and enabling artists who want to take
work to the larger scale getting through the economic downturn – obvious issues
regarding availability of funding but for us (as an international dance festival) the
weakness of sterling will have an impact on our programming ability availability of
support, funding, nurturing to new, emerging artists, companies and graduates.’
• ‘Finding companies which are able to show new innovative pieces which are relevant
to an audience which are of an advert-culture generation, (only able to concentrate
on something for short periods). A lot of pieces students have recently seen was
seen to be dull, undeveloped and indulgent. The students were turned off to dancing
by these well known big name companies.’
• ‘For Arts Council England to continue to develop the RFO [regularly funded
organisations] portfolio of clients to give venues and audiences the breadth of dance
they want, perhaps by reducing the number of tours and touring dates required from
each company.’
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