Hot to trot!

Sadler’s Wells has been selected to form the new National Youth Dance Company (NYDC), which will become England’s flagship national company for dance. With a £200,000 funding package from the Department for Education, coupled with a further £200,000 from Arts Council England, the NYDC will provide 90 performers aged 16 to 19 with intensive training and performance opportunities led by world-leading choreographers, with a view to developing their performance skills in preparation for a professional career in dance. The establishment of such a company was a recommendation that featured in the National Plan for Music Education and Darren Henley’s recent review of Cultural Education (AP249). Another of his recommendations – to extend ‘In Harmony’, a national music programme based on the Venezuelan El Sistema – is also becoming a reality, with the Sage Gateshead, Nottingham City Council, Opera North and Telford & Wrekin Music appointed to deliver four new In Harmony projects between 2012 and 2015, making a total of six of these projects across the country.