It’s that time of year again dear readers as we roll out the awards for 2003. This is the inaugural year of our brand new ceremony “The Pilchards” as we acknowledge triumph, perfection, pretension, incompetence and stupidity in the wacky world of dance as we know it and you see it. So pull on your best frock (the girls too!) and take a stroll down the red carpet of insanity and pull up a chair at the table of folly (that ‘ll do for the metaphors, Ed!) and see if you have won a tasty treat of fish in a can.
Outstanding Achievement in Comedy: DAIR “I Woz Ere”; Laugh out loud parody of school life performed by Rosie Kay, et al, choreographed by Luca Silvestrini.
Mentioned in Dispatches: DV8 “The Cost of Living”.
Outstanding Performance in Dance: Erna Omarsdottir for IBM401 A Users Manual with music by Johan Johansson nothing short of superb!
[link] IBM401 A Users Manual
Mentioned in Dispatches: The bloke with the tape measure in The Cost of Living by DV8.
Overworked, Underpaid, Much Appreciated Award, Sponsored by the DNC®: TDI in Stockton and DAIR in The Midlands for courage under fire and working above and beyond the call of duty by delivering literally thousands of education classes, workshops and programmes while simultaneously being a professional touring dance company.
Mentioned in Dispatches: Every single professional dancer in the UK and elsewhere who we all know are the ones that really make this business work!
Stupidest Bloody Idea we Ever Heard Award- sponsored by Clive Sinclair: Breandan de Gallai for attempting to mix Riverdance with The Matrix. Kind of like trying to mix key hole surgery with scuba diving, silly boy!
The “Oh Shut up Wayne” Award for Talking Complete Rubbish Sponsored by Bernard Mathews Finest Tripe®: Wayne McGregor for this in 2001;
“For me the way in which I generate language is very much related to the concept of the piece and if I find a range of, and ways of generating language from the concept, the pieces are going to be called ‘Brain States ‘. And the idea is, how is that you can make visible brain information, basically. If you were to vision what the brain looked like or worked like or how spatially the brain would be, as an entity in space, how is it that you can make that visible for an audience?”
We don ‘t know what he ‘s talking about either!
Mentioned in Dispatches: The ballet directors who met for their “Rural Retreat” this year. A lot of talk and not much else!
Longevity Above and Beyond the Call of Duty Award Sponsored by Duracell®: Merce Cunningham who, at 332 years old, is the worlds most enduring choreographer and we believe he was photographed choreographing at the court of Charles II, King of England.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger Biggest Disappointment of the Year Award “Sponsored by EazyMuscle® Steroids and the National Committee for Electing Stupid Republicans”: Random Dance Company “Nemesis (ok we know it was 2002 but this is comedy). When we learned they were working with the Jim Henson Creature Workshop the audience and the members of the Lab were expecting a knock about laugh with some dancers and the muppets. Instead we got some dancers in small shorts and some more dancers with big knitting needles on their arms. Nobody laughed!
Silly Old Trout Award, Sponsored by Sea Life Centre®: Judith Mackrell, who else! For her continuing contribution to marginalising dance with her pompous self indulgent reviews and her ritual sacrificing of ballet choreography that people could really care less about!
The International Coalition of Unfortunate Acronyms Special Award: Arts Council North East (work it out for yourself, Ed!)
The George W. Bush “Weapons of Mass Destruction® Dogma Award”: Government officials in Frankfurt, Germany for closing down the worlds only ballet company that never did Swan Lake and putting William Forsythe out of a job then failing to agree on plans to help keep him in the city.
The BBC Special Award for Excellence in Video Production (that’s sarcasm right? Ed!): Essex Dance and the Dance.Tech project for turning out the most hideous promo video ever conceived by mortal man. Filmed and edited by a blind cat with 2 paws and only a basic understanding of the camera it was using. It’s a shame really because they only have a very expensive motion capture system, “high end” graphics work stations, cameras, projectors and so on. Money well spent!
The Broken Watch / Super String Theory Award “€œ Sponsored by Timex®: Londondance.com for their current adventures in time travel. Altering the layout of the news pages so the system has started spitting out news from 3 years ago. They are, at present, hoping no one will notice! At time of writing the news page was previewing a dance TV show that was on air about 18 months ago!
To those that are upset by these awards all we can say is Bah[tm] to all the professional dancers we say have a great Christmas and fabulous New Year! Tootles