Can the Place Prize get it right?

It seems the Place Prize just can’t get it right. In 2008, then Theatre Director John Ashford named the young choreographer Adam Linder as the “shock winner” of that year’s Prize; the shock largely because Linder’s piece, Foie Gras, had come bottom of the live audience vote on almost every one of the ten nights of the 2008 Finals. If it was a shock two years ago when the former Royal Ballet dancer took home the big prize ahead of his notable contemporaries and audience favourite Van Huynh, the dance world positively reeled this year when the Prize went to nine-times audience vote winners Ben Duke and Raquel Meseguer for It Needs Horses. The Prize is damned if it does agree with the audience, and damned if it doesn’t.

Dance writers lined up to reveal their fundamental dislike of the work, variously described as “shockingly lazy” (Judith Mackrell in The Guardian), “flat” (Jenny Gilbert in The Independent), and “dim and downright disgusting” (Ismene Brown at theartsdesk.com). The one thing all writers agreed on was the strength of the winning performance; the choreography left some cold and others angry. The critics seemed clearly at odds with the audience, and also, it seemed, with the Place Prize judging panel; Duke spoke openly about the hostility of the press in his rather barbed acceptance speech.
Leaving the piece itself aside, the whole episode opens interesting questions on the way we watch and receive performance, depending on why we’re doing it. I’m often faced with the question of why critics often appear to write unfavourably about a piece that others in the audience have loved. One answer is unquestionably to do with personal taste, which could distinguish the views of any two people sitting in the audience. But another is equally undoubtedly to do with the degree of exposure to dance performance, with all the variations in style, theme and quality that entails.
A critic who views over 100 performances a year is less likely to be bowled over by a so-so performance than somebody who gets to the theatre less often; it is, after all, a matter of statistical certainty that the majority of performances will be merely average. And a busy dance writer has to sit through an awful lot of average performances.
There is a question of information, too. What looks like the height of originality to a relatively new audience member might well appear like the twentieth McGregor rip-off that year (there’s a lot of that around at the moment) to somebody who has seen the other nineteen. It’s part of the critic’s job to be informed about the work on which they are reporting, and to inform others, accurately, as well. The critic has a responsibility to be honest about the work, and honest to their readers; an audience member watching for their own delight rarely has the same burden.
Sitting on a judging panel typically involves using the same critical faculties that writing about dance does, but with the added pressure of needing to reach a consensus, or at least a decision all on the panel can live with, in order to carry out the very blunt function of awarding a prize. There’s less room for nuance in a judging decision than there is in writing – the winner is the winner and the others aren’t. It’s hardly surprising there were tears backstage at this year’s Prize.
But to return to the question of difference, was the view of the critics this year really so dissimilar to that of the audience and judges? If Ashford acknowledged the “shock” of the 2008 winner in his announcement and subsequent press release, current Theatre Director Eddie Nixon appears to suggest tempestuous backstage dispute in his own statement to the press: “just as It Needs Horses did not win over 50% of the overall audience vote, it was similarly extremely difficult for the judges to choose their winner.” Nixon’s carefully diplomatic but highly suggestive statement at once reminds us that the winning piece never once persuaded an absolute majority of the audience that it deserved the prize, and seems to hint at disagreement among the judges. Duke may have complained about the press in his speech, buy perhaps the audiences weren’t so sure about the piece as the headline nine winning votes seemed to suggest; and perhaps the judges weren’t, either.