The world’s most acerbic dance commentary
Regular readers of Article19 will know that we, here in TheLab™, have little time for the AD of Sadler’s Wells Theatre Alistair Spalding. We have our reasons, do some digging to find out why. That said the man came good when confronted with some journalistic jackassery from Gavin Esler on the BBC news programme Newsnight […]
A letter sent by Arts Council England (ACE) to their client list of Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) tells those organisations to make preparation for cuts to their annual budgets of 10%. The letter, signed by ACE’s Chief Exec Alan Davey, is keen to point out that no numbers have yet been confirmed but states; “Given […]
It’s time to put the horseshoes in the boxing gloves and start swinging because the politicians are coming after the arts and pretty much everything else in christendom. In our editorial ‘Get Off the Floor’ we pointed out that should the worst come to the worst then you will have to fight back and there […]
On the funding ladder of life, just one rung above Arts Council England (ACE), is yet another acronym. the DCMS, The Department for Culture Media and Sport. Although they recently added the Olympics in there somewhere the civil service appears not to have gotten the memo because they still call it the DCMS. But we […]
Normally when an arts organisation is putting out press releases about their revolutionary new thing they really do love it when you get in touch and ask them for an interview. It gives them a chance to answer a lot of soft soap questions in a vain attempt to convince an unimpressed world that they’re […]
Arts Council England CEO Alan “Wavey” Davey has been sounding off in the papers, well, The Stage, but still, about the new UK coalition government and their saber rattling about cuts to the arts, “sharing the pain”, and so much other nonsense. Wavey has called for people to make “rational” arguments about why funding the […]
David Jays piece in The Times Online, like so many technology pieces in the broad sheet press, reads like an infomercial for the vendors of the technology they are covering. In this case Mr Jay is rambling on about the virtues of 3D film technology and its relevance to the performing arts via the newly […]
In our piece ‘quoted’ we argued that dance companies should stop using pull quotes from critics because, to be blunt, critics are ridiculous and caring about what they think is like caring if a serial killer has easy access to really sharp knives! To prove us wrong (except, not really!) The Stage newspaper has published […]
A few days ago we received an email straight out of the “fact is stranger than fiction department” from Random Dance [Company] (yes, that Random Dance [Company]) (what’s with all the damn brackets? Ed!) It said this; “Hello, I am writing to you from Wayne McGregor | Random Dance as I have seen that you […]
Conventional wisdom goes that if your show is not very successful, in terms of audience numbers, then the reason must be that your show is either no good or the art form is not very popular. Conventional wisdom is of course almost always completely wrong. If people don’t come and see your show then how […]