Irish dance confronts the national question

By the end of the year the island of Ireland will have a new “world-class full-time dance company” buoyed by a budget of up to €5 million over three years. By 2026 it will employ approximately 10 dancers on a full-time basis, touring nationally and internationally, and partner with newly formed dance training initiatives.

This injection of €5 million is the Arts Council’s largest increase to dance provision. But the speed and nature of the development has caused surprise and disquiet within the dance community. Since many choreographers and dancers are present or possibly future recipients of Arts Council funding, publicly expressing these opinions has been difficult.

The idea for a new full-time dance company first appeared in the Arts Council’s new dance policy, Advancing Dance, which was launched last October by Catherine Martin, Minister for Arts. Throughout its pages the new company is the main attraction, listed as the principal solution to deficits in opportunities for artists, audience engagement and developing capacity within the sector.

At the launch Prof Kevin Rafter, chair of the Arts Council, praised the policy “in particular the significant decision to establish a new, all-island dance company, which has been a priority for myself and my council colleagues”.

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This prioritisation led to a breathless timescale. Two weeks after the launch the tendering process opened for a feasibility study for the new company. The successful tenderer, UK-based Festival and Events International, delivered its study on April 20th and it was published on May 5th. By May 22nd the council had issued a call for proposals with the final decision to be made in October. Up to €500,000 will be immediately available to the successful bidder to spend in the final quarter of this year. In a little more than 12 months after publicly mentioning the possibility of a new company, there will be one in place, spending half a million euro to establish itself.

Impressive speed, especially since new arts initiatives often get caught in a log-jam of red tape and inertia. But why the sudden need for a new company? And is it really the fix-all solution to developing dance?

Dr Lisa McLoughlin, head of dance with the Arts Council, says it was driven by the dance sector: “The germ of the idea emerged during the Think Tank discussions on dance and came up repeatedly when we were consulting for the dance policy.” Think Tank was a series of three meet-ups with members of the dance community on the future of dance, independent of the Arts Council, initiated by Dublin Dance Festival, Dance Ireland and Dance Limerick.

Reading the final report on the Think Tank’s discussions – an impressively articulate piece of research assembled by Dr Aoife McGrath of Queen’s University Belfast – it is clear that the dance sector regard current Arts Council funding structures as the main impediment to development rather than the lack of a full-time company.

A “National Dance Company” is one of 89 “challenges and ideas for solutions” listed in the summaries of the three Think Tank discussions, available on the Dublin Dance Festival website. It is not listed as a “proposed action” in these summaries and in the final report it is regarded as a distant aspiration: “In the long term, the establishment of a National Dance Company housed in a dedicated national producing house for dance, and with an integrated professional dance school and junior company, would address many of the fundamental problems associated with the sustainability of the dance sector in Ireland.”

The main concerns with Arts Council funding expressed during the three Think Tank discussions have been tackled, says McLoughlin. “We are addressing them within our policy. We’ve increased funding to the independent sector. It has trebled. And the overall dance budget has increased by 40 per cent since 2019.”

“The extra €5 million is not coming from current dance funding,” she says, so that existing funding is not in jeopardy from the new company. “Dance has been chronically underfunded and we have only come to a level now where there is a bit more capacity. We can’t take money away now.”

But if that money is available for a new dance company, why was it not made available to existing companies?

The company will operate on an all-island basis, but the Arts Council of Northern Ireland will not contribute to its establishment. McLoughlin says it could seek funding from ACNI for Northern Ireland-based initiatives once it is up and running. Money and support structures for dance in Northern Ireland are scarce and while a new all-island company could greatly help development, there is a worry that it could also squeeze out existing companies if it starts drawing on the limited funding available.

A key role of the new company will be in providing full-time employment to a core company of dancers, says Mc Loughlin, which will help prevent the familiar haemorrhaging of Irish dance talent to other countries. But full-time employment could also be offered by existing companies if they received the €5 million allocated to the new company.

Perhaps more importantly, the new company will help to develop a canon of Irish dance. All existing Irish dance companies funded by the Arts Council are choreographer-led, meaning the company’s repertoire consists almost exclusively of works created by the artistic director. The new company will instead be led by an artistic director who will develop a repertory from different choreographers. This kind of repertory company is common in most other countries, but has not been found in Ireland since Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre in the 1980s.

Honing an Irish dance repertory will be an important development, but again could have been achieved with targeting funding schemes offered to existing companies.

There has been avoidance of the term “national” with this new company, but there is a possibility that it becomes a national company. The last time the Arts Council sought a new company to address sectoral deficits was in opera. The company that emerged is Irish National Opera.

Would a national dance company create a dominant “national” dance style that will come to define Irish choreography? It almost occurred the last time the Arts Council set out to create a full-time company.

The Arts Plan 1995-1997 guaranteed three years of funding to three companies – Rubato Ballet, Dance Theatre of Ireland and Irish Modern Dance Theatre – after which the Arts Council would choose one to become a full-time company. This company would create “a distinctive indigenous theatre dance ... informed by the already existing rich cultural heritage of traditional music and dance.” However, the funding guarantees were not followed through and the plan was scrapped.

McLoughlin says there is no specified genre or style the new company needs to work within – ballet, contemporary or traditional. But the feasibility study states: “Traditional dance and its place within the company’s programming is an area of development that will need to be considered within the company’s remit.”

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McLoughlin is held in high regard within the dance community and considered an effective head of dance at the Arts Council. But historically there has been an uneasy relationship between the council and the dance sector. For years chronically underfunded, dance has suffered sudden cuts to companies with the council showing a heavy hand in dictating artistic policy. Irish National Ballet, Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre, Institute for Choreography and Dance and Daghdha Dance Company all disappeared after sudden funding cuts.

In the most recent example, Daghdha went from being the highest funded dance company (€525,000) in 2007 to having its funding cut in 2011. During this time the Arts Council became more hands-on in dictating the company’s artistic direction. An internal assessment of Daghdha’s 2009 grant stated: “Although the council normally prefers to engage with and fund organisations on the basis of what they propose, in this case it will be necessary for the council to specify those elements of the company’s programme it wishes to support.” It then approached Daghdha to run a dance graduate programme that the Arts Council was setting up called Step Up. Daghdha could keep its name but could not run Step Up in parallel to its existing work, so would have to fire its artistic director, Michael Kliën, and change its articles of memorandum. The following year the company grant was cut further and in a letter to the company the Arts Council made clear that the grant offered was to be spent “specifically and exclusively” on a mentoring programme.

Relationships between the Arts Council and the dance sector are undoubtedly better now, and with the general increase in dance funding and a new company the art form will be better resourced than ever. But the new company, whether it is established from scratch or emerges from an existing company, will be a dominant new presence in the dance landscape. Resources, such as studio space, are tight at present. So how that dominance will affect other companies and future initiatives is yet to become clear.