I can only speak from my own experience, which is of the British dance
scene (predominantly Scotland) over the last five years.
I started off in this scene full of enthusiasm for dance and really wanting
to facilitate and support the dance genre here. Over the last five years I
seen a lot of Scottish, UK and Continental dance (hundreds of
performances), had meetings with many many dancers and choreographers in
the UK, have put a huge amount of time and effort into trying to get dance
projects off the ground here in Scotland (and a fair amount of money,
funding performances), to be met almost universally here by complacency,
apathy and even hostility.
Yes, I'm biased. We're all biased by our experiences, and our experiences
are always subjective. So was my message; I wasn't intending to present any
opinion as objective fact, and on the Internet I usually assume that my
opinions will not be taken as such.
On the other hand, I'm one hell of a stubborn so-and-so and tend to become
defensive and intolerant of people who I percieve to be getting in my way
or seem to be unwilling to let me make the art that I want to. I want to
believe that there are dance practitioners out there who are open to new
ideas and not locked into a parochial, defensive microculture. Certainly,
the warm welcome I've received on this list has given me a lot more hope
than I had last year.
>That is, although one may have seen a lot dance in a
>certain area, one can see a whole diffrent face of things somewhere else.
>And i dont just mean the _way_ people move, i mean the _reason_ they move --
>what they think they are up to.
That's really good to hear. Maybe I've just had some bad experiences.
>I have visited cities, or institutions, where I too had the feeling
>the dancers were a "cloistered" culture, but I wouldnt want to state this as
>a matter of fact.
I'm not into expressing my opinions as matters of fact, although that might
come across in my writing style, for which I apologise. However, I don't
see any problem with expressing a "feeling" as a matter of fact.
>Openness, or lets say humility, is a
>wonderful human quality. Something, we could agree, the world might do with
>a little more of.
Agreed. I hope I can endeavour to present more of it in the future.
(Yet another New Year resolution... :-))
Nick Rothwell, CASSIEL contemporary dance projects
http://www.cassiel.com music synthesis and control
years, passing by, VCO, VCF, and again, and again