On Sunday night the dance world will celebrate a true one-off. For 28 years Val Bourne, indefatigable and indomitable, has been the most constant figure in British dance. She has widened our horizons and shaped our taste in ways we didn’t even know we wanted. Like a terrier she has fought for contemporary dance, and like a mother hen she has nurtured some of its most important creators. As artistic director of Dance Umbrella, London’ s annual festival of contemporary dance, Bourne has inspired, entertained — and, yes, infuriated — decades of dancegoers.
She has cajoled us into watching a man barbecue meat on the stage of the ICA — one of Umbrella’s more outrageous moments — and thrilled us with the glories of Mark Morris choreographing Handel at the Coliseum. Twenty-eight years ago, when she started, they said a dance festival that eschewed tutus and tiaras would never work in London, but this feisty former dancer proved them wrong. Since 1978 she has programmed more than 1,500 performances by more than 300 companies and artists from 21 countries in 33 venues. She has promoted an entire generation of British-based choreographers and introduced a huge range of foreign companies to Britain. Probably no one, anywhere, knows more about contemporary dance.
Now, as she slips gracefully into retirement at the age of 67, the dance world prepares to mark her enormous contribution with a gala at Sadler’s Wells. Umbrella favourites such as Mark Morris, Michael Clark and Richard Alston will gather to pay tribute in an evening of dance hosted by Richard Move, the wickedly funny Martha Graham impersonator. It will be smiles all round on the night, and why not? They won’t just be honouring a much-loved figure, they will also be welcoming her successor, Betsy Gregory, and raising a glass to Umbrella’s rosy future.
But how rosy is that future going to be? Audiences are expanding, venues are opening up, and contemporary dance is thriving as a seedbed for new ideas in the theatre. Independent choreographers used to working with a budget of nothing are now working for Kylie Minogue and on the West End. But Bourne, who has spent her life making sure dance happens, sees a hurricane on the horizon.
“It’s a fantastic time to be working in dance, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves,” she says. “It may look vigorous, but dance is not deeply rooted enough in our culture, like music, theatre or literature. We are very vulnerable.”
For Bourne, the storm clouds gathered when Tony Blair took office. “If you took a snapshot of dance today it’s very healthy, but it’s healthy because of what went before. We have supported a lot of artists over the years and we are seeing the benefit of that now. Things began to change when it became the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and when Tony Blair started inviting the Spice Girls and footballers to Downing Street. That was a revealing moment, the moment when culture was redefined. It’s not really about dumbing down, it’s a case of putting things in the pot which don’t really belong together and making a bad stew.”
And a bad situation is only getting worse, thanks to the two fatal P words of arts funding — philistinism and politically correct thinking. “Dance is now seen as a social sticking plaster,” Bourne says. “So that working with minorities and the disadvantaged, be it physically or socially, seems to be central to what we do. Channel 4’s Ballet Hoo! is great, that these disaffected teenagers should have had a chance to do something as wonderful as that, but that’s what dance is now seen to be. The fact that it’s high art has been sidelined.”
Check out the Arts Council England website, which emphasises the health benefits of dance above all else, and you begin to see how right she is. “We’ve been told that because there is so much obesity little girls and boys can do dance classes as a way of losing weight. Well, that’s all great but it’s a by-product of dance, it’s not what the arts are there for. But it’s what this Government thinks the arts are there for.”
At a time when British choreography is the envy of the world, those who make dances here, including some of Umbrella’s most celebrated artists, are finding it harder and harder to get public funding. “We are all being pushed into ticking the right boxes, and if you are white, middle-class and middle-aged you are not ticking anything. Take someone like Russell Maliphant. The French can’t believe that Russell doesn’t have regular funding. But he’s disadvantaged because he’s a white, middle-class, middle-aged choreographer.”
Michael Clark, whose Stravinsky Project at the Barbican this week is one of the highlights of this year’s festival, is another example of Britain turning its back on one of its most talented creative spirits. “Michael’s three-year funding from the Barbican comes to an end next year, and the Arts Council has made it abundantly clear that there’s nothing there for him.” Clark, the former punk prince of British dance, is now a sedate 44.
“Contemporary dance has always been thought of as the prerogative and playground of young people. You cut your teeth in contemporary dance and then you get over it and make pieces for ballet companies — that was the feeling. So no provision has been made for those who might be going on beyond their twenties and thirties to carve out a career in contemporary dance. People like Michael Clark and Jonathan Burrows. Yet if you look at the ages of the choreographers in this year’ s Umbrella you will see that two-thirds of them are over 40. Nobody made provision for that whole generation, and those choreographers who didn’t cross the line into regular public funding five years ago are not going to make it now.
“I don’t know who to blame. We were the model for funding dance; that’s the terrible thing. Now we’re following the US model because essentially we’re both philistine countries. But American funding dried up five years ago and now there’s nothing there. If we go down that route it would be very sad.”
If the vagaries of funding send Bourne into a spin, the subject of ticket prices makes her see red. “The theatres are being forced to yank up their prices, and the one thing that will compound the idea that dance is an elitist form is high ticket prices. When Umbrella started we could set up a stall in the student union and tell people: ‘It’s new, you’ll like it.’ And they would buy tickets. Not any more. Students today owe so much money that they want a guarantee of perfection before they buy. This isn’t Swan Lake, people don’t know what they are getting. Contemporary dance is about something new, and that makes it harder to attract audiences. But we’re in danger of alienating the young by putting dance beyond their means.”
So much has happened to dance since Umbrella began. Major venues, such as Sadler’s Wells, the South Bank and the Barbican, have opened their doors to the festival. Audience perceptions have changed too, with people no longer afraid that a night of contemporary dance means people rolling around on the floor in baggy costumes. And as the very definition of dance has changed to embrace just about anything that moves (and some things that don’t), so too has the art form become bolder in presenting itself. Merce Cunningham’s company making dance magic in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern; Stephan Koplowitz’s innovative Genesis Canyon taking over the Natural History Museum: these are prime examples of Bourne’s vision in taking dance outside its theatrical borders.
Gregory, of course, may choose to go down a completely different road, perhaps preferring to nurture more new artists and leaving some of the more established ones to fend for themselves. But whatever happens, Bourne is in no doubt that dance needs Umbrella.
“The festival is an act of faith,” she says. “These are threatening times. There is some very good work out there and no political will to support it. A festival like this makes a convincing argument for a body of work that is incredibly diverse. It tells people that they are going on a journey which celebrates dance in all its forms.”
Dance Umbrella ticket line: 0870 7301407. The gala is at Sadler’s Wells, EC1 (0870 7377737), on Sunday
