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Dance UK’s Miller calls for expert to champion dance at BBC

Published Tuesday 7 April 2009 at 15:50 by Matthew Hemley

Dance UK director Caroline Miller has criticised the BBC for its lack of dance programming and expertise, claiming that a shortage of shows featuring the work of British companies is having a negative impact on the industry.

The head of the lobbying body has called on the Corporation to reinstate a dance expert to its arts commissioning team, adding that she believed no one has a remit at the BBC to focus solely on the art form since the departure of the BBC’s former head of dance Ross MacGibbon in 2007.

She said that without this, there would be no one to champion the genre at the BBC, and warned that provision would fall behind as a result.

“There isn’t anyone with expertise at the BBC to push dance. Most of the BBC’s dance coverage seems to be with the Royal Opera House, and it’s been many years since English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Scottish Ballet have been on our screens,” she said.

Miller said she was “positive” about shows commissioned through the entertainment team at the BBC that feature dance - including Strictly Come Dancing - but added: “In terms of shows commissioned through the arts division at the BBC, there is not very much. A while ago, magazine programmes about the arts featured a lot of dance coverage on them. But today, something like The Culture Show does not have a huge amount of dance on it. It’s one or two pieces if you’re lucky.”

Miller claimed that lack of diversity in the genre would be damaging to the industry, because it would lead to a “lack of understanding” among audiences about the variety of dance forms.

“If you think about the public’s perception of ballroom dancing before Strictly Come Dancing became fashionable, people did not know anything about it and thought of it as naff. Now they have been exposed to it, they feel they have an understanding of it and enjoy it. If we don’t have that for contemporary dance or ballet and all the other genres of dance, there will be a lack of public understanding of them and they will suffer,” she said.

However, a BBC spokeswoman said it was “not correct to suggest that the BBC’s dance programming has in any way suffered” since MacGibbon’s departure and added that dance now falls under the creative leadership of Peter Maniura, who is head of television for classical music, dance and performance.

She cited the fact that big performance ballets such as last year’s Romeo and Juliet on BBC2 are preceded with “bespoke documentaries to give more context” to audiences and added that BBC4 regularly “offers in-depth dance content”.

“There is an array of dance content across the BBC’s broadcast outlets and it is the BBC’s strategy to put dance at the heart of the schedule, making the medium accessible to all,” she said.

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