The ladder for success

This month Yorkshire Dance will welcome around 100 delegates to its second annual youth dance conference Dance Insights in Doncaster. It will certainly be a febrile atmosphere in which to debate what the future of dance for young people might be – how it might be funded, how it might be supported − or abandoned − by the formal education system, how we can ensure it becomes increasingly inclusive, and how best to protect it from marginalisation under one political structure or another.

This is an era of petition-signing, campaigning, fervent advocacy to MPs, councils, funding bodies and anyone who might conceivably be ‘turned’ into a philanthropist. An era of cuts, of arts organisations forced to close and of a drift towards a world in which arts provision for young people will be driven entirely by commercial forces. A world in which young people’s access to the arts will be a privilege rather than a prerogative.

It is not overstating the case to say that excellent youth and community work, slowly but surely, does our whole society good

You will never stop kids from dancing. No amount of worst case scenarios being realised will stop them, and they do not need funding, or protection within the national curriculum, or regional dance development agencies to do it. And there will always be some with enough DIY get-up-and-go (and luck) who will end up as professional dance artists, choreographers and artistic directors. But what about the rest? What is really at risk here?

Excellent youth dance provision is inclusive. Where some private or commercial provision can tend to reinforce body and gender stereotypes, youth dance should accommodate a diversity of body shape and ability, of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. It should have as clear a focus on the process of making dance as on the final product. It should emphasise personal creativity and empowerment, rather than hierarchical or didactic teaching. It should foster choreographic innovation by the participants. It should engage young people with aesthetic, expressive activity rooted in physical awareness, fitness and communication, uniquely affecting their confidence and wellbeing.

At its best, youth and community work in dance means a personal engagement, not only with the children in the studio but with their parents, siblings and their wider communities. It is not overstating the case to say that excellent youth and community work, slowly but surely, does our whole society good.

Providing this kind of opportunity for young people, for most agencies and dance companies, is not a cash-cow. It costs to provide something valuable – a structured programme of skills development, a safe environment in which to work, access to teachers and artists with a depth of knowledge and experience, tailored assistance to find the best route up the career ladder for those who want to climb it, holistic guidance towards a genuinely healthy, active lifestyle for all.

Because it costs, someone has to take responsibility for providing it. Yorkshire Dance – and other agencies and dance companies – can offer the practitioners, the expertise and, in some cases, the facilities. We do a lot of fundraising, and there are many trusts and foundations to whom we are indebted, as well as to Arts Council England and Leeds City Council. We can seek out what commercial opportunities exist to ‘exploit’ the talents of our youth dance companies. But we – all of us, from parents to politicians – have a duty of care for this work and for these young people.

If we do not enshrine dance and other artforms at the heart of our children’s education, if we do not guard ferociously their status within the curriculum, we impoverish ourselves now, and for generations to come. We will all end up paying the price.

But I’m just another arts professional adding to the clamour. You should meet Sammi. She is 17, in her final year of sixth form and lives in Seacroft, Leeds. Two years ago she discovered Yorkshire Dance Youth, our then fledgling youth dance company, membership of which is offered free to residents of specific postcode areas in the city where arts provision is limited. It meets weekly and since joining Sammi has performed at two of our annual youth dance showcases at West Yorkshire Playhouse and at U.Dance 2013, Youth Dance England’s annual festival. She is about to perform on the pitch at two Rugby League World Cup matches to what will certainly be bigger audiences than many professional dancers have ever seen.

“Yorkshire Dance was advertised in my school,” she says, “and I needed something to do because Seacroft isn’t very exciting. I’ve always loved street dance and been into dancing and have learnt different genres like contemporary dance and traditional sword dancing. The group is like my second family. It’s changed how I am. Dani, our teacher, is strict but a brilliant role model; she’s helped me become more confident, and working with her has made me realise I want to be a choreographer. I’d never thought about a career in dancing before.”

Sammi was selected by Yorkshire Dance to undertake a work placement, assisting in classes for adults with learning disabilities, and working at an arts festival, learning about administration and production. She hopes to study dance and choreography at university. In the meanwhile, she has received a bursary from the National Youth Arts Trust, part of a programme to counter changes to school curriculum and accountability measures making some switch away from performing arts subjects, which includes mentoring support from Arlene Phillips and free ballet classes and dancewear.

Sammi’s route through dance so far represents a ‘ladder’ of organisations taking responsibility for her – primary school, secondary school, regional dance agency, NYAT and, all being well, university – equipping her to be a skilled, successful, gainfully employed, tax-and-National-Insurance-paying member of society who may well go on to train or employ any number of other young dancers. Chop out, or weaken, any one of the rungs on that ladder, and we will make her progress upwards so much more perilous, so much harder to complete. And we will do great damage to the opportunities for future generations of dance-inclined children for whom Sammi and her peers might be life-changing examples.

In the run-up to the Dance Insights conference, Yorkshire Dance has posted a number of open questions on Twitter, including “Why should youth dance be subsidised?” One of the first replies was this, from the Chief Officer for Culture and Sport at Leeds City Council: “It’s not subsidy, it’s investment.”

Antony Dunn is Marketing & Communications Manager at Yorkshire Dance.
www.yorkshiredance.com