in Article19's end of the year review

www.article19.co.uk

please bring your sense of humour to the party

(i'm pretty sure this is in the right topic)

LOL! I love that award! Thank you!

To be specific:

The Tony Blair Congeniality Award

Criticaldance.com, so polite the Canadians are complaining that it makes them look bad.

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Taken in (polite) good spirit, Twister. I guess that there is scope for a range of dance websites with different approaches. One thing's for sure - no one could ever accuse Article 19 of politeness.

There are a lot of points in your review which are controversial, but clearly this is the way it is intended to be. However, i will take strong issue with your treatment of Monica Mason, who has taken over as the RB's Acting AD. As an outstanding performer, crucial conserver of the MacMillan repertory and a source of enormous support and assistance to new entrants and dancers recovering from injury, she deserves better than your cheap crack.

<small>[ 12-17-2002, 12:44: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Well Ms Mason is not even mentioned but in contemporary dance it may suprise you to know that very few professional dancers, who are just as highly skilled, capable and gifted as any at the Royal Ballet, find it highly amusing when the pampered prima donas at Covent Garden get their buns in a twist (pardon that pun please) on such a regular basis.

In contemporary dance most are earning either £250 per week or less, have no physio backup in any way shape or form and their jobs, such as they are, come with no protection what so ever.

The end of year review is a lot more restrained that it could have been, believe me.

And the feedback from our readers (some 80,000) suggests they find it very funny, which is what it is intended to be.

And come one, we can all agree that Ashley Page is Wet surely?



<small>[ 12-17-2002, 06:44: Message edited by: Twister ]</small>

I want to know more about the "Visually Impaired Designers Guild".

Sorry Twister, but the Review says re. the Royal Ballet, "We understand that a member of the cleaning staff is now in charge and everything is going rather well." As Monica Mason is the one in charge, she is referred to in the Review.

It comes as no surprise to me that the terms and conditions of contemporary dancers are very poor in the UK. Here's what I said in July:

"A lot of work has been going on behind the scenes to make the case for dance and the need to remedy the appalling pay and conditions that are all too often seen in the sector."

Here is the link to our coverage of "Paying for the Privilige" seminar run by DanceUK at Dance Umbrella 2001.

My guess is that DanceUK's measured lobbying on this theme was one of the factors that lead to the specific mention of dance in the Govt spending review in July 2002. I suspect that their approach will be more successful than vitriolic diatribes.

Re, the quality of UK contemporary dancers, again it didn't really come as a gob-smack moment. Here's what I said about the Snag Project tour, earlier this year, "If you get the chance do go and see these performances. They feature some of the best dancers in any style performing currently in the UK."

Re. Ashley Page, sticking to a style of dance making that you know the bulk of the audience at the ROH will hate could be described as brave or misguided (I'd go for the former), but wet is not what springs to mind.

<small>[ 12-17-2002, 15:30: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

and who the hell cares about DanceUK in 2001. we are just about to go into 2003 and professional dancers with 15 years experience are earning below national minimum so well done Dance UK on that front, sterling work.

and if the Government is on the case! well we can all just sit back because now everything will be fine. They could provide more funding for the arts after they sack all the firefighters, get rid of all the trains, cover the country in the concrete of new roads while everybody chokes on the pollution and sell of all the playing fields so school kids have no where to do sports.

Listen, the end of year review was supposed to be, and is, sarcastic and humorous. The only person in the world taking it seriously is you. there is no profession in the world that needs a big needle to puncture the pretentiousness of it all more than dance.

But what you have managed to do is get us curious about Dance UK, we have long held off having a serious look at that lot so in the new year we will take a long hard look and what they actually achieve rather than just taking the bullet points and face value.

now kick back and have a good christmas.

So what you're saying is that because it's not as good as it could be, it doesn't matter that it's better than it was?

it's not better than it was!!

it may be better than it was for certain dancers in well funded company's but for the grunts that do most of the work it is no better and dance uk are no where to be seen.

We'll let you have the last word Twister.