grace, I am surprised at the Australian situation. From memory, about 70% of the Arts Council of England dance budget goes on ballet. <P>Of course, here in the UK, much more modern dance is created, primarily because this is a period of much greater creativity in modern dance compared with ballet. However, the conditions under which these modern works are created are usually appalling. When some RB dancers worked with the highly reagrded Sue Davies, they were shocked at the conditions under which these leading modern dancers worked - no showers, cold church halls inviting injury, etc. <P>I suspect that the US situation is similar or worse than in the UK. Thus decent conditions to create work will be a God-send to modern dance professionals who do not have access to the working conditions of SFB etc. Perhaps some US professionals can help us here with direct experience.<P>The question reamins as to why this is a relatively barren period for ballet choreography worldwide. My basic thought is that there are structural problems in ballet itself:<P>- If you study modern dance, it will often be as part of a degree course and choreography will be compulsory. The more gifted students will have lots of opportunities to create work and then, if they wish, go on to do MA specialist courses. <P>- At the time when the students above are starting their courses, most of their ballet peers are finishing their courses and joining companies. Some will have done some choreography, but they will often be the ones who the school believes will not make the very top as dancers. And choreography perhaps needs a more mature perspective, so this age difference is important.<P>- Once in the modern dance sector, although totally cash-strapped, (many dancers have other jobs) professionals will find that creativity is a virtue and dancers are used to learning new works all the time. The ratio of new work in modern to ballet may be (a wild guess) 30:1. Sadly many ballet companies make little time available for budding choreographers to do new work. Two of the leading modern dance choreographers in the UK, Jonathan Burrows and Russell Maliphant started their careers in the RB. But in order to flower as choreographers they had to leave and move into the modern sector. <P>- The ballet choreography greats of the 20th C can all be linked to the dynamism and creativity of Ballets Russes: Fokine, Nijinski, Nijinska, Balanchine, Ashton (via Rambert and de Valois), MacMillan (via de Valois). However, this creative surge sems to have run its course and a new one seems to be required. I've enjoyed work by Bintley, Page, Marston, Tuckett, Hampson and Hart, but no one is saying that they are rivals to the great ones mentioned above. <P>- On the Continent, there are exciting new things in ballet, which may or may not be a way forward. I would not want to say that it was <u>the</u> direction, but Forsythe is certainly <u>an</u> exciting way forward. But some, of course, would not count his work as ballet ('Vertigenous Thrill of Exactitude' apart). <P>To sum up, I do not think that the choreographic crisis in ballet is cash related, but rather a function of its own structures and traditions. The RB have started some good new initiatives to encourage new ballet choreography and I really hope that they bear fruit. <P>I wondered how many topics there are in The Studio concerned at least in part with the teaching and nurturing of student choreographers. Of the 155 topics, there are about 3; 2.5 seem to be modern and 0.5 ballet and that is about Forsythe.<P><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited October 17, 2000).]
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