John Ashford, out going AD of The Place in London, has taken a parting shot at pretty much everything before he moves on to pastures new in Europe, where the grass is always, always, greener.

In an interview with Time Out magazine (which Mr Ashford worked for many years ago) he berates British dance for being too "timorous" and "boring" amongst many other things compared to its mainland European counterparts.

Throughout the piece some old, albeit accurate, stalwarts are thrown out there. For example, ACE's meddling in funding policy means dance companies have to set up educational outreach programmes. The bigger the company, the bigger the programme. If the company doesn't have an outreach programme then there is a pretty good chance they won't get funded.

Almost everybody in the arts, dance or otherwise, has been complaining about that for decades. The smart dance makers though long ago embraced this particular facet of obtaining funding from ACE having figured out that if you want to do what you want to do then, to a certain extent, you have to play their game.

Education and outreach isn't going anywhere anytime soon until ACE steps up and tells the DCMS (Dept. For Culture Media and Sport) to back off and let people make work, no strings attached.

Mr Ashford then moves on to the way dancers are trained:

"Fundamentally I would say that if we want to have a cutting edge - and I'm not sure that we have one in London - then we have to notice what Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker is doing at PARTS [Performing Arts Research and Training Studios in Brussels, the hotbed of experimental dance]. We don't have anything like that. What we do have is too much dance education, which is producing people who are not going to have a place in an overcrowded profession."

This statement is probably a bit of a shock to Veronica Lewis the current Principal of the London Contemporary Dance School, based in the same building Mr Ashford has been skulking around in for the last 23 years!

Encouraging people to be experimental is fine, we're actually all for it, but there's a down side. If you're coaxing people to be off the wall, controversial, edgy or whatever then you run the risk of dance makers doing weird stuff just for the sake of doing it. What you'll end up with is the Turner Prize but in a dance context. Pile some bricks in the middle of a room and call it art. The critics will fawn, the public will lay down and cry.

If you want young dance makers, and old ones, to find their way then it has to be their way, not some pre-packaged Experimental™ idea that's been foisted on them by others. Any creative idea is valid but it's a mix of ideas that keeps things fresh, getting creative tunnel vision in the search for something "new" is only going to cause stagnation and boredom (from the audience's perspective) in equal measure.

It's also slightly ridiculous to suggest that young dancers will forever be shaped by their original training. The majority of dancers and choreographers (the good ones at least) are constantly learning and evaluating new methods, new forms and new ways of creating throughout their career. As someone who worked at The Place for 23 years, Mr Ashford should probably know that!

The final knife in the back is a rather cowardly generlisation about a "boring' regional company who continue to get funded just because they tick the right boxes".

Whether or not Mr Ashford had the courage to name the company to the journalist is not clear but it could be anyone of a dozen dance companies that are mid to large scale that are not based in London.

Here in TheLab™ we often make reference to The London Dance Mafia, of which Mr Ashford was a part, which considers any company not based in the nations capital to be, for reasons that are never made clear, somewhat less than. Whenever we hear the term "regional dance company" we consider it to be a pejorative statement, like "children's television presenter" or "tabloid journalist".

With his final comment Mr Ashford really pins the tale on his donkey of half baked rationales. It seems to have escaped his attention that many dance makers (and dancers for that matter) working in the UK are not from the UK and they weren't even trained here.

The very idea that geographic location or the inept ramblings of ACE are somehow preventing the UK from producing great work is laughable when you take a look around and see what's being produced in this country all the time by companies and individuals too numerous to mention, young and old alike.

How can we prove that? Well that's just it, we can't of course because it's all down to personal taste but if Mr Ashford gets his way, wherever it is he's going, then be prepared to see a lot of people sitting around on stage yelling about potatoes.

We wish you well Mr Ashford and don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out!

[ Time Out ]

On may 11th Alistair Spalding the AD of Sadler's Wells Theatre, quoted in the Guardian newspaper, uttered a couple of sentences that have, over the last few weeks, exposed just how inept large scale arts organisations are at answering simple questions.

From a journalistic perspective it's the gift that keeps on giving. Nothing is more likely to put the bit firmly between an intrepid reporters teeth than well paid officials in public organisations that won't answer direct questions.

"It is something to do with women not being as assertive in that field," said Spalding. "It's not that I don't want to commission them."

That's the quote that's causing the trouble and it is where the games begin.

The first thing you do when reading a quote like that is carry out some due diligence. If the person never said it or was taken massively out of context then you need to verify that (it's not very likely though and since no lawsuits have been filed, that we know of, and the article is still online, then the chances are Mr Spalding did say those words). Easy enough to verify though, a quick call to Sadler's Wells press office should sort that out, after all they have five press officers.

The fun and games begin immeadiatley because first of all the press office say they don't know where Mr Spalding is, somewhere in Europe, they're not sure where. His PA has a travel schedule but Sadler's Wells is apparently so cavernous they can't find his PA either.

After much back and forth we leave some questions with them and they promise to get back to us. After a few days, nothing but silence. We call back;

"Oh, we thought you had lost interest when you didn't call back", they say.

"But you said you would let us know when you found Mr Spalding and put the questions to him", we say.

"No we didn't!", they say.

We tell them we have not lost interest and if they wouldn't mind could they get him to answer the questions we have already left? They agree. At least they know where he is now so that's something. He's in Spain (at least he was the the telephone conversation took place), watching some work. They won't tell us what work he's watching though. Spooky!

In the meantime you push on and try to get some comments from ACE. Why ACE you ask? Well Sadler's Wells is funded by ACE so when one of their clients goes off the reservation you ask them what they think. This stuff isn't rocket science you know.

The go-to person at ACE, because Sadler's Wells is a dance venue and the comment was made about female dance makers, is Janet Archer, Director of National Dance Strategy.

You don't get put through to Ms Archer directly though because the press flacks are in the way. They're called flacks for a reason, it's their job to get in the way. Let the games continue!

Unlike Sadler's Wells they keep better track of their senior people. Ms Archer is in back-to-back meetings all day, somewhere in Swindon. We still can't speak to her though, all those meetings you understand, so can we leave the questions with the flacks and they'll get back to us?

Whenever you hear that, and it's all to common these days, you know the flacks are the ones writing the answers. The intended target is just going to sign off on the comments (if that), perhaps editing a word or two. We know this for sure because ACE admitted it. We should really play poker with these guys. If only we knew how to play poker.

The official response from ACE is banal, irrelevant to the questions asked and of course, we can't follow up.

Time to play the trump card with ACE, request an on-camera interview with Ms Archer. Now that's sneaky. You can bluster all you like but when you're in front of a camera there's nowhere to hide. Straight questions, straight answers, nice and simple.

Little did we know it was time to descend into the twilight zone.

Our first phone call is pleasant enough. Can we have an interview on camera we ask? The person on the other end of the phone says ACE will look into it. Then nothing for a few days. We call back, explain we're calling about the interview with Ms Archer. They're still looking into it.

"What's the interview about?" They ask.

"It's about Mr Spaldings comments, ACE's lack of a coherent response and general ACE funding policy with regard to dance" (may as well get some more stuff in there while the camera is rolling).

Yes, but what are the questions? They ask.

We ponder that question in silence for a moment. Article19 then made it perfectly clear that under no circumstances would we hand over the questions prior to an interview taking place. Sure we can give an overview, which we had already done over the phone, but no way were the press flacks going to get the questions.

ACE fired back asserting that all journalist they deal with are more than happy to hand over the questions "so the interviewee can be prepared". We used both the [London] Times and The Guardian as examples. ACE stuck to its guns and said, sure they do!

Having given them a chance to take that back because a quick call to the Guardian would reveal the truth ACE's press flacks didn't back down. So, we call the Guardian, several times, and eventually speak to their press office (yes, even newspapers have a press office) and they say, no way that's a standard agreement. It would take a pretty exceptional set of circumstances to hand over questions prior to an interview they tell us.

Just for a bit of balance we give the editorial standards people at BBC News a quick call to see what their position is on handing over questions before an interview.

No way they say, that type of thing, "it's in the blood".

This particular episode of what has become a complete farce culminated today in yet another call to ACE's press office to follow up on whether or not they would give us the interview. Initially they went the same route as Sadler's Wells and thought this whole thing was old news and they didn't want to talk about it anymore. They're trying to run out the clock.

When Article19 pointed out that it was only 3 weeks ago and let's face it not a lot happens day to day in the world of dance and we still wanted the interview they changed tack.

ACE insisted that Article19 had agreed to send in the questions but we had failed to do so. Hang on, we responded, we did nothing of the sort. Let's face it, why would we spend hours getting in touch with the right person at the Guardian to get an on the record response to ACE's claims if we were going to hand over the questions?

The press office then stuck to their original claim that journalists always hand over questions before interviews. The Guardian says they don't (that was the example Article19 provided). ACE's press office then seemed to suggest that the Guardian was out of order for funneling their responses through a press office which is exactly what ACE do. That was a weird moment for sure.

When asked to provide the names of any journalist that had done what the ACE press office was suggesting they declined to do so.

Digging around a little on the Guardian website reveals just one interview with an ACE staff member over the last six months. The interview was with, then chairman, Christopher Frayling. Beyond the odd potted quote or six ACE probably doesn't get a lot of requests for interviews with their staff members.

The phone call with ACE ended with the press office putting the phone down on us. They said we were being mean, we disagreed.

Meanwhile, back on Walton's Mountain, Sadler's Wells was to be found still searching for its wayward Commander in Chief. Yet another phone call resulted in yet another person answering the phone. The person we needed to speak with was in a meeting (what is it with the arts and all these bloody meetings?)

We did get a response eventually, via email (the press flacks weapon of choice). Mr Spalding has our questions, the wheels keep turning! After 23 days we are still no further forward.

Here in TheLab™ we've come to the conclusion that these folks are just not used to anybody pressing an issue with them and repeating the same questions they have yet to answer. ACE, Sadler's Wells et al are playing the game but they don't seem to understand the rules.

Playing dumb or refusing to give interviews just makes you look guilty, even if you haven't done anything wrong. Words and actions count, but it's perception that's gonna kill you in the end.

All we can say to ACE and Sadler's Wells is this. If you think we're being harsh, just thank your lucky stars you're not in front of Jeremy Paxman (seen below squeezing William Hague MP until he almost bursts). We'll bet you all the money in our pocket that Mr Paxman didn't hand over the questions before the interview, and we'll bet even more money that Mr Hague didn't ask for them.

Browsing around the performing arts podcast section on iTunes we, here in TheLab™, were surprised to see a new entry from those crazy kids at the Royal Opera House in London.

The podcast covers the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet with both video and audio segments on offer. Since Opera is the most ridiculous thing ever invented and this is a dance publication we'll focus on the Royal Ballet.

Let's get one thing straight right away. If ever there was an art form that needed to loosen up and put itself out there a bit more it's classical ballet. Classical ballet companies are wound so tight they're always about two shows away from needing sustained assistance from a mental health professional. So a podcast is a good thing.

We haven't been to a big ballet for a long time so it was with a happy heart that we downloaded the latest video podcast about 'Les Sylphides', 'Sensorium' and 'The Firebird'.

Our excitement quickly turned to despair when it became very obvious that there was one vital ingredient missing from this 10 minute video extravaganza. There's no bloody dance in it!

What we do have is a lot of chatter from Monica Mason (RB-AD), some dancers, (we know they are dancers because they are being interviewed in a dance studio - geddit?) and some other bloke.

A quick phone call to Shawn Chapman, new media bod at the Royal Ballet, revealed some answers.

Apparently there is no footage, rehearsal or otherwise of 'Les Sylphides' or the others. The excuse reason given was that it is, apparently, very expensive to point cameras at one of the RB's shows and film it despite the fact the ROH has its own in-house media team and they own a DVD production company (Opus Arte).

'Les Sylphides' was first performed by RB way back in 1932 and in all that time it never occurred to anybody to film the damn thing, not even once!

Article19 was also told that because rehearsals don't start until just before the show goes out there was no time to get any rehearsal footage, which would have been something worth watching.

The only problem with that is the video was uploaded on April 27th and the triple bill bowed on May 4th for a month long run.

So, if you just paid a large some of money to watch this show in the last few days you should know that the dancers were only rehearsing for about a week before taking the stage. No, we don't believe that either. Somebody at "new media" in the ROH needs to get their act together.

Videos from dance companies with no dance in them are like Police officers with no ID numbers. They're up to no good and people are just going to complain.

Try harder, would you please!

[ ROH Podcast on iTunes ]

Arts Council England (ACE) continue their "good christ how bad a week are we having?" with the announcement of a £40Million (GBP) fund to help certain companies in the arts that may or may not be struggling during the current economic bun fight.

Astute readers may have noticed the story earlier this week that mentioned ACE losing £4Million in the recent budget cuts announced by the government and those astute readers may be wondering just how an organisation can increase funding to certain companies using a sum of money 10 times the amount they had just lost!

It turns out that ACE has been stashing away large amounts of cash, from Lottery funds. According to The Stage;

"These balances have traditionally been kept in reserve in case large projects - such as capital building projects - need unexpected injections of cash."

Unexpected injections of large sums of money is a polite way of saying "we keep money in reserve because some chuckle head is almost certainly going to screw this up and we'll have to bail them out whether we like it or not!"

The money which could have been used to fund other projects was kept out of the way because ACE apparently has little or no-confidence that the things they authorise and fund can be managed in an effective way. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, no?

As if this latest funding scheme was some form of nutritious health bar they are calling it "Sustain" (you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried).

So, here's the rub.

First of all stop stashing cash away under the bed in case somebody, somewhere is an idiot and can't manage their project properly and comes crying to ACE for more gruel. Assess the projects properly, fund them properly and make sure they are managed properly. In other words, try very hard to be, at the very least, competent!

Secondly, stop making announcements that basically come down to "hey, we're going to fund the arts". That's what you're supposed to do! You would think they had figured that out by now.

It's getting to be like those inane reality police programmes on the BBC where some dullard with an IQ of 5 wants a pat on the back for arresting a criminal, it's your job chuckles, get over yourself already!

A related piece of comedy later emerged in The Times when the current head of ACE, Dame Liz Forgan, is quoted thus;

"If there's one thing that enrages me it's the idea that the arts are a luxury," she said. "The word summons up the vision of people swathed in mink getting out of Rolls-Royces. The reality of the arts is that it's devoted people living on fourpence ha'penny who passionately love what they do."

Just four or five paragraphs earlier the writers, Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester, state;

"The potential beneficiaries include the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, the Serpentine Gallery and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra."

Power to the people!

[ The Times ]
[ The Stage ]

Belgium is home to some of the most hard core creatives in the dance world and now they're taking it to the people with the project below that had 200 participants dancing a very tightly choreographed piece of work in the middle of an active train station in Antwerp.

You will notice the complete lack of bubble heads in dayglo vests making sure nobody gets hurt or has any fun as would be the case in the UK.

Kudos to DanceUK for pointing it out!

[ Maria Dans ]

There are unconfirmed reports that at least 30-40 people have expired while watching Arts Council England's online videos of their recent "Great Art" series of seminars held at the Sage Gateshead in, erm... Gateshead in the North East of England.

Emergency services declined to comment on just how many instances of fatal "catatonic shock" have been reported in the last 72 hours! Rumours abound that one of the killer phrases was "value extracted per pound expended". The person who uttered that mind crushing, brain melting - for want of a better word - pish, shall remain nameless!

The seminars were designed to give a number of people, of little or no importance, the opportunity to sit on platforms and present some of the mast banal information in the history of mankind to a willing audience populated, one presumes, by people that have lost the will to live.

It's very difficult to understand, having watched some of the four videos on offer, just what on earth this type of "seminar" is supposed to achieve. Even if you could get all the way to end of this stuff - and there is no way of scrubbing through the videos - it's very hard to quantify just what it is you would learn.

The introductory session, introduced by a woman with no name, is delivered in such ridiculously enunciated language you feel like a primary school child being told off because you don't understand what "great art" is or why you're supposed to care!

If you really must have ludicrous seminars then ok, have at it! Knock yourself out, literally! (in fact we actually encourage these guys to go run head first into a very hard surface).

However, should you make the misguided decision to put these presentations online then try and actually present the information in a way that doesn't make your viewers want to stick their head in a blender.

You do not, under any circumstances, put several hours of seminars online in free roll mode and expect anybody to get through them all. You shoot, you interview, you edit, you present the key points, you do the damn job properly!

You do the job like you care about the subject of which you speak. You present it with passion, with energy and enthusiasm. You have to make people want to care about this banal crap because it must be important if you spent all this time and money to get people talking about it! Right?

ACE has been whingeing on several fronts of late that people don't like them very much, or words to that effect. This is why! Because dealing with ACE is like dealing with a bank or an insurance company or a stock broker.

It's a jargon filled, pedantic nightmare from which there is no escape but it's a necessary evil because it's the only way to get support for artists to do what they want to do.

Let's make this clear, the desire to want to speak at, or be a part of a seminar series like this should automatically prevent you, for life, from ever having any position of responsibility within the arts, ever!

The pain is just too high a price to pay!

[ Great Art Seminars ] (watch at your peril)

It would appear that the awards people have been at it again. This curmudgeonly group of tweed wearing, tea drinking, scone scoffing individuals, smelling every so slightly of urine, have once again put their loafer covered feet firmly into their denture laden mouths.

This time it's the Olivier Awards and the septic group of individuals responsible for handing out said gongs. Contrary to popular belief these awards are not in honour of Olivia Newton John but Laurence Olivier, noted thesp and, at the time of writing, no longer alive.

But for a different vowel and and the misplacing of an "r" these awards could have been a very different affair and a lot more entertaining.

So what is it about this year's prizes that have ruffled our collective feathers so? The winner of the "Best New Dance Production" was Pina Bausch and company for both 'Café Müller' and 'Rite of Spring'. So far so not at all very interesting. The Olivier awards are serious, Ms Bausch is serious and the people who go to see Ms Bausch are very very serious.

Here in TheLab™ we likes us some Pina. If you've never seen 'Nelken' then you really should even though it lasts for two hours and there is no interval. But that's Ms Bausch for you.

The problem here is that 'Café Müller' was made in 1975 and 'Rite of Spring' took its first bow in 1978. Both works have a combined age of 65 years. In contemporary dance terms these works are up there with the dinosaurs. Even if the company was touring with the original cast they would still not be, nor will they ever be again, "new".

They're old, very very old, much like the crusty old kippers who decided to give these works the "new production" award. We would like to suggest that awards judges drag their addled, broken bodies out of London and get as far away as is humanly possible from Sadler's Wells Theatre.

It's not at all clear what's going on down there in the big smoke but it might be a good idea to have the water checked out or scrape the paint off the walls and have it analysed in TheLab™ (ho ho ho, Ed!) for traces of lead.

Either that or pull your heads out of your backsides and take a look around at the wider world of dance where there is a lot of genuine "new" work on show.

When contacted for comment the Olivier Awards denied they smelled of urine at all, because who would admit such a thing!

On reflection this has not been a good couple of weeks for dance on the internet. The Hofesh thing didn't work, Dance Uploaded TV is no good and now we have Sadler's Wells Theatre (SWT) in London losing the plot completely with their launch of a global dance competition.

What's a "global dance competition" we hear you cry? From the look of the thing it's a way for Sadler's Wells to cope with their, so very obvious, institutional laziness by trying to find new work without having to actually look for it.

The crux of the thing is this. SWT has set up a website, linked to YouTube, where anybody, and we do mean anybody, can upload a video and have it entered in the competition. The winner gets some cash, a commission and a spot on the stage of next years "Sampled" programme at the London venue.

Of course there is the customary "audience vote" element to all of this and we all know how reliable that is, especially on the internet.

So far, in terms of entries, we have a man, obviously immune to feeling shame or humiliation, dancing in his office, a couple of guys from Chile dancing in a cupboard and a lady from the New Territories doing a thing to Eminem!

In the press blurb Alistair Spalding, AD of SWT, says "Not everyone is lucky enough to receive formal dance training or to perform on stage."

No they aren't Mr Spalding but then again not everyone is lucky enough to go to medical school and do operations. Perhaps we can set up a competition whereby people can show their dexterity with a scalpel and we can schedule them to do your next lobotomy!

We feel sure, here in TheLab™, that all those professional folks out in the wide world of dance will be thrilled to learn that they needn't have spent all that time training, working, creating and honing their skills.

They shouldn't have spent all that time trying to market their work, create video material, images, press packs and spend weeks and months sending all this stuff out, cultivating relationships, contacts and who knows what else.

All they really needed to do was upload a crap video to YouTube and enter SWT's competition and they would have been noticed because, as Mr Spalding says; "there are people doing great things in the living rooms" (or words to that effect).

Don't be good, don't excel, don't be the best, just be lucky and make sure you have a video camera! Every dance school should have that as their motto.

No surprise to learn that one of the judges for this nonsense is Arlene 'botox' Phillips from the TV dance show that just won't lay down and die 'Strictly Come Dancing'. Another judge, apart from Mr Spalding of course, is Martin Creed, a Turner Prize winning artist, who has no connection to dance that we could find.

You can watch the launch video below, be careful what you eat before you do though! In a statement SWT denied being completely useless (or at least they would have if we asked them because who would admit to such a thing?)

[ Competition Website ]

What you are looking at above, and we know you're wondering, is a dancer from Hofesh Shechter [Dance Company]. We're not sure which one it is, it might be the man himself, but it's hard, very hard, to tell.

The image was captured during the live "web cast" from the Roundhouse Theatre in London this past Friday. If you want to know what the images looked like when they were actually moving then click on the video below and all will be revealed, minus sound unfortunately.

Here in TheLab™ we have a pathological dislike of London so it was with a happy heart we learned that the dance event of the year, or sommat, was going to be available online for all to see, for free, from the comfort of a rather nice office chair!

Of course it was an online - live - web video so we weren't expecting Blue-Ray quality HD with surround sound but tiny Misnomer Dance from New York put on a watchable web cast all the way from the USA so we though, mistakenly, at least we will see what's going on.

As you can see from the video above we had to give up after 5 minutes because what sort of fool sits back and watches something like that when they have Finding Nemo to hand?

You'll have to forgive us now because we need to get arithmetical again. Using some technical tools we were able to monitor the video stream coming from the Roundhouse. At no point did the video stream ever shift more data than 76KB/s (Kilo Bytes per second). The video is also not running at 25 frames per second, it looks like 15.

Our, pre-recorded, video material shifts about 15 times as much data as that because we need to make it watchable because if it's not watchable, then what's the point?

The truth is the Roundhouse didn't have the technical infrastructure to cope with the amount of data they needed to move, very few companies do outside of multi-million dollar corporations, so this was all a gimmick. If they had used an online streaming service provider, many of which are free, the video would still have been a bit lame but it would have been watchable, probably!

On a different tack our blogger on the ground, so to speak, Grotto, wrote up some coverage of the show and it appears a big problem for all concerned was the fact that most of the audience had to stand, on purpose.

Some folks, unable to see, gave up and left, much like we did with the online version, but they paid £12-£15 for their ticket. Didn't it occur to somebody, anybody in a position of responsibility that something like that just might be an issue?

Choreography like this is something that needs to be savoured, looked at in detail so you can enjoy it, concentrate on it and focus. How the hell can you be on the edge of your seat if you don't bloody well have one?

Dance is not, thank goodness, a rock concert.

So the Roundhouse and Hofesh Shechter [Dance Company] take a bloody nose on a couple of counts. What was the work like? Nobody seems to know!

[ Grotto ]

With their latest attempt to provide an online experience for dance built, so very obviously, by committee we have Chisenhale Dance Space, East London Dance, Greenwich Dance Agency and Laban getting egg all over their collective face with danceuploaded.tv.

The usual suspects are all in evidence. You can upload video, you can embed video, you can comment on video, you can rate video or you can fall off your chair and slip into a coma (the preferable option).

We can't really tell but the site looks like it's built from a, so-called, "white label" social networking platform like Ning or ........ one of the other ones. If it was custom built then it was money wasted.

Dance Uploaded (DU) suffers from three key problems that all niche social networking sites fall victim to.

1. It's unnecessary. Vimeo.com, and other video sharing websites, allow you to build small communities within their framework that look and feel a whole lot better than DU. The video quality is better, the community options are better, everything is better because they are built by professionals with skills in interface design, typography and aesthetics.

2. It looks like crap. Big cut out graphics, dancing grannies, London buses, garish colours. The whole site looks like a mock up for the opening credits of Grange Hill, circa 1985. It's patronising, it's pathetic and it's embarrassing!

3. The videos are terrible. Whatever they looked like before they were uploaded the compression has not served them well. If you start with low expectations then pass the captured video through four layers of mud what you get coming out the other side is the video material on DU.

Not too surprising in all this mess to see ACE's logo lurking in the corner. So desperate is the funding behemoth to pour money into "new media" they'll sign a cheque for anything with enough logos/backers/partners that goes on the internet with the aim of getting "young people" into dance.

We're not allowed to swear on Article19 so all we say to that is FORK OFF and something else about Cupid doing dangerous activities for movie stars!

Whomever is responsible for setting this thing up would do better, next time, to spend the money on teaching people to shoot and edit, making a few top notch videos in the process and showcasing them on a platform that doesn't look like it was put together by a five year old in the midst of a crayon frenzy!

One final thing. If you upload a video you have a chance of winning some kind of prize! Lord only knows what that will be!

[ danceuploaded.tv ]