Dance

DANCE: What's a good year in dance? The number of performances, the amount of Arts Council funding, or maybe nice colour photos above the fold? Certainly visibility is important in keeping dance in the public consciousness, but the invisible work in education, professional development and other resources remains as important a yardstick.

Dance now finds itself sharing similar issues to the national economy, most importantly why we didn't invest in infrastructure during the boom times.

The number of dance productions has increased after a lull of a few years and this year the International Dance Festival Ireland brought international acts and a wide-ranging programme that attracted a different audience on the fringe of dance.

The headline event and one of the highlights of the year were the performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the Abbey, which were both high profile and artistically impeccable. Having read all the hype in the international press it was good to finally see Akram Khan's choreography and he later performed his first full-length work Kaash at the Belfast Festival. Khan has become the darling of festival producers and appears everywhere. Combining a stunning, hybrid technique with creative curiosity, his work is immediate yet subtle.

Irish companies were largely absent from the festival but almost all featured strong new work in 2002. Coiscéim's The Rite of Spring and Rex Levitates's Senses were representative, one bold and slick, the other well-crafted and considered, while later in the year both Dance Theatre of Ireland's The Simulacra Stories and Irish Modern Dance Theatre's Autumn Dances were exemplary.

It was encouraging to see newer voices continue to push through. Julie Lockett's Tank at the Dublin Fringe Festival and Finola Cronin's The Murder Ballads made particular impact and it was encouraging to see dance included as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

Russians seemed to specifically make their mark, with the stylish and refined - but poorly attended - productions of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake by the St. Petersburg Ballet in the Helix, and the duet Consisting of Them by Taras Burnahev at the Dublin Fringe Festival. Other successful visits included Independent Ballet Wales' touring production of The Taming of the Shrew, which was subtle and perfectly formed for life on the road.

Youth dance continues to grow with new groups emerging in the midlands, while the Irish Youth Dance Festival in Dun Laoghaire gave a valuable snapshot of the healthy range of activity. Youth dance remains important at all sorts of levels; it provides performing opportunities and experience, generates audiences and plays an important developmental role in youth culture.

The Irish Youth Ballet Company and Shawbrook in Longford continue to focus on youth ballet and the latter's Irish National Dance Prize has added a bit of glamour for young dancers (this year's winner was Karen Williams).

Most dance activity remains centred around Dublin, Cork and Limerick and 90 per cent of the Arts Council's revenue funding for dance went to these centres. The government recently unveiled a National Spatial Strategy and many of the social and infrastructural deficits in this report are mirrored in dance.

Huge swathes of Munster and the BMW region are without an active dance presence and although Fluxusdance's new FLEX programme is beginning to develop dance programmes within these regions, self-perpetuating programmes are in need of assistance.

Daghdha Dance Company's schools touring programme, which disappeared when Yoshiko Chuma became artistic director, is sorely missed. Although Chuma's works have placed dance in non-theatre settings, straight into the community, site-specific works are absent from the programmes of many professional companies. Liz Roche's Their Thoughts are Thinking Them at the National Gallery and Myriad Dance Company's Scramble on the streets during the Wexford Opera Festival were this year's exceptions.

THE end of the year saw the death of Carolyn Swift, former dance critic with this paper. The publication of her book on the Pike Theatre meant that attention focused on the events of 1957 rather than her more recent work in dance. She was a tireless advocate and regaled me with stories of many difficult battles in getting dance represented in the pages of this newspaper and in getting proper coverage to regional work. But, just like dance activity itself, it was the invisible work that she did, particularly for young students at the College of Dance, that may be least known but will be most remembered.

Several personnel changes were announced at the end of the year: Bridget Webster is moving on as general manager of Coiscéim, Yoshiko Chuma is leaving Daghdha and Ella Clarke has been appointed dancer in residence in Wexford County.

The Institute of Choreography and Dance in Cork hosted a residency from Deborah Hay earlier in the year and provided important opportunities for choreographic research and development.

But yet another year has passed and we seem no nearer to the provision of proper dance training. The visit of students from the Paris Conservatoire in the summer was accompanied by a derisory one-hour talkshop on training before the Dublin performance.

We have had all the conferences and reports we need, but without any one organisation or lobby group taking real action it will be left to the dedication of the private dance teachers and unsubsidised private dance colleges to continue to provide tomorrow's dancers.