Touring: Culturally Diverse/Black Dance in the UK

Tim Tubbs

Mission?

A few years ago, a leading choreographer, interviewing me for a post and looking at my CV, asked whether I felt I had a mission to empower culturally diverse/Diaspora (CD) artists in the UK. He wondered whether my calling might be a throwback to my family's British Empire tradition as missionaries, teachers and entrepreneurs. Granddad Tubbs was Archbishop of Rangoon, converting the population of the Nicobar Islands (of recent tsunami notoriety) to Christianity. The maternal side of my family built railways in and imported corn from Argentina. An intriguing proposition from this choreographer, but truly....NO!

A decade earlier, as programmer at Sadler's Wells Theatre (1982-1993), I worked with everything - opera, ballet, musicals, contemporary dance, performance art, rock concerts and world theatre. I presented the Wells' debuts of Phoenix Dance, Adzido, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane, African Ballet of Guinea and a host of other CD companies, from Cumbre Flamenca to Kodo Drummers. Great times.

Then came Pan Project, Peter Badejo, Mallika Sarabhai, Jacqui Chan, Koffi Koko, Namron, Irven Lewis, Henri Oguike, Jean Abreu, Saju Hari, Union, Bi Ma, Sakoba, Imlata, Shobana Jeyasingh and Mavin Khoo dance companies (among many others). It just happened. I made no conscious choice to work with CD artists or thought of myself as developing a specialism. They were just among the most creative and interesting dancemakers around, so of course I wanted to work with them.

The Approach

I have never approached touring CD dance in any consciously different way from any other work; although I will admit there have been experiences along the way to modify that assertion.

CD work has long since passed into the UK mainstream from its protected special status of the early multi-culti years - you've been ignored and we're here to put that right or we'll fund you and judge you on your ethnicity rather than the quality of your work, etc. We expect all artistic work now to stand or fall on its own merits: and about time too. 'Teacher's pet' was always a patronisingly uncomfortable role, and you usually suffered for it. So we are growing up.

Speaking as a programmer and producer (and it's a view undoubtedly shared with international promoters who come window-shopping to UK dance showcases like British Dance Edition), I believe contemporary Britain's most stimulating or distinctive dance work could be characterised broadly as 'performance art', 'gender-bending' or 'multi-culti'. And that's mostly what is being booked: DV8, Michael Clark, Henri Oguike, Akram Khan and so on. To some extent, I think UK promoters, venues and audiences agree. Is that so surprising? Although we Brits love to feel guilty or apologetic about ourselves (all that self-deprecation), we are in fact streets ahead of the rest of Europe (and arguably the USA too) on multiculturalism and creative integration.

After six years managing the African Peoples' Dance (APD) touring company Sakoba, I was asked to speak at an Arts Council England conference on 'Promoting Black Dance' and, truth to tell, I was hard pressed to think what I was doing differently with a CD company/artist from tour-booking, producing, promoting or marketing other kinds of work. It was all the same business, really.

The same expertise is applied, the same professional experience, skills and contacts to develop the project with the artists, plan and budget the production, raise the money, book the tour, create the promotional material, nurture critical mass, organise travel and accommodation, rehearsal schedules, technical staff, artists or collaborators and then deliver and market the tour itself.

Singular Species

So what have I found special or different about touring CD artists and work?

Just as dance has specific touring needs, as opposed to other shows - for instance floor surface, temperature, lighting - so APD has certain specific issues (as do flamenco, tap, bharata natyam, etc.): working on the small-scale with integrated live musicians, for example. That means: finding rehearsal and performance spaces where you can thump djembes or stamp on the floor all day without being lynched by the neighbours (tricky); transporting, maintaining and stage-managing a welter of cumbersome instruments (costly); and coping with musicians, who often have a very different working culture from dancers.

I've had some challenging moments with CD artists over the years. Creative time-keeping, for one. My experiences and joking apart, it's bad for business to leave people waiting or turn up late all the time: not good enough. 'Easy, Tim-man, when I want t'be found, I'll be found,' was one of my favourites from a delightful Caribbean musician with a legendary talent for vanishing without explanation at key moments. Flamenco musicians were expert disappearing acts too, injured egos hissy-ing off to the airport for the silliest reasons - grow up. Substance use: major ganja, of course, but please God, not at Spanish customs on a British Council tour!

And the dramas, the high-strikes! 'If I'm not happy, I'll just lay it on you, or anyone else handy, without regard to the situation, professionalism, fairness, good manners or common-sense.' I've been shouted at, for no good reason, by an artist, right in front of the presenter, four other UK dance companies and a phalanx of senior British Council representatives. These infantile histrionics have been a defining characteristic for me of an undeveloped professional working culture, of individual insecurity disguised under that infernal "Attichoode" we meet everywhere. Or may we just call it rampant unprofessionalism? It really won't do, I'm afraid.

The Ethnic Thing

But there are many positives specific to touring CD dance in the UK.

People have criteria to meet and boxes to tick, so in funding and programming terms, 'Ethnic' has an extra edge. Promoters and venues will want to show a diversity of dance work, and there is always room for the non-Western booking.

The snag is, you find yourself lumped in with the most unlikely competition in pursuit of the 'Ethnic' gig. For example:
'Oh, we don't have much of an Asian community in Puddleton-on-Marsh.'
'Er...Shobana Jeyasingh doesn't typically appeal to a predominantly British Asian audience, it's more of a contemporary dance company: we always do better in Brighton, for instance, than Leicester.'

'Well, we have RJC coming next Spring so?'
'So you have ticked the ethnic box for that season with a contemporary dance company, and cannot consider an APD, hip hop or classical Indian company during that three-month period, when your other dance gigs will go to physical theatre or contemporary acts, right?'

On the other hand, the promoter knows as well as you do that you're going to sell more tickets in Wimpleswick than Not-Another-Dreary-Abstract- Contemporary-Dance-Company-Please. A CD dance company can offer: exoticism (play this card with care according to personal taste), something engaging or different, possibly live music, a sense of openness to world influences, the global village, Britain's urban diversity, and - important point - very strong visual images. One of the frequently lamented weaknesses of UK independent and contemporary dance is its incomprehensible and recherche publicity language and imagery. You know what I mean; those blurred photos of uninteresting, uncostumed figures with all the impact and charisma of a wet Monday night in Hull and that incomprehensible babble the artistic director's chum wrote, which is supposed to sell the work to an audience.

CD work (contemporary or otherwise) tends to offer strong, attractive and engaging photo imagery and its copy tends to be less pretentious and alienating, thank God.

Another distinct advantage of touring CD dance is that, rightly or wrongly, it is perceived to offer positive role models and major opportunities for outreach or education work. It's not hard to see why a promoter will opt for a martial arts, hiphop or African artist, for example, to engage, motivate and energise a reluctant classroom, a community group or young people.

Pause for self-criticism. Perhaps it is too easy for a manager/producer like myself to overlook the specific contexts of culturally diverse artforms. Still, promoting CD/APD work has really enabled (or obliged) me to engage with unfamiliar and often difficult experiences or concepts. For this I am very deeply grateful and perhaps that is what keeps me connected and active in the sector.

A gap remains, unbridged and only partially acknowledged. I have come to sense a significantly challenging isolation on either side. The culturally diverse or Diaspora artist brings an experience and expertise to the UK dance world which is sometimes barely articulated, understood or shared with the enabling partners, be they the UK-born dancers who will interpret/perform the work, the funders or presenters who will finance or book it, the critics who will damn or praise it, the audiences who will pay to see it...and people like me, who are perhaps the prime enablers, negotiating and furthering the artists' desire to create and show their work by managing, producing and promoting it.

Next Steps

I see (and welcome) a growing self-sufficiency, professional maturity and realism among younger CD/APD artists, an awareness that times have changed and that new challenges and opportunities are there to be embraced, and that this demands new creativity, new approaches and new partners. Do I also perceive a steady burgeoning of regionally-based APD/CD practitioners, whose work is starting to make its mark both locally, regionally and nationally?

More good news can be read in the growing commitment and enthusiasm of leading UK producers and programmers to promote, commission and showcase APD/CD dance. Look at recent CD successes in leading dance establishments: Jonzi D's hip hop festival at Sadler's Wells; Brenda Edwards' Hip or Raj Pardesi's Dance Beats at The Place; The Big Mission/DanceXchange (Birmingham); programmes by Derby Dance Centre or Dance City Newcastle; East London Dance's recent Create at Stratford Circus; or at Covent Garden, ROH2?s initiatives like Nitro at the Opera, Ballet Black and the new: currents series at the Clore Studio Upstairs in 2004 and 2005, which I have been honoured to curate.

It's a sobering reality and the times, they are a-changing. Art, as the song goes, is never easy, but it's a fantastic place to be in. While we have to be very realistic to deal with things as they are, artists and their promoters are here to challenge and rise to challenge. BBC star scriptwriter Andrew Davies, writing in this week's Stage about the difficulties of turning Dickens' complex Bleak House into an effective TV script, described each problem as an opportunity, which sounds like a recipe for success. Let's talk and, above all, let's do it!

Tim Tubbs, an independent dance manager, producer and consultant, is Director of UK Foundation for Dance which manages a range of artists, produces dance productions for touring, runs Marylebone Dance Studio and is active in the training and support of dance managers.