Dance UK's Conference

Over the last few days Dance UK has held an industry wide conference entitled "The Future: New Ideas: New Inspirations". I did not attend but I followed many of the proceedings with interest as they were streamed to the public by Dance UK TV and tweeted about on twitter. Indeed I even re-tweeted some of those tweets myself:

Watching @DanceUK with @Gillian_Lynne LIVE NOW. Tune in: http://t.co/d0I11Lougs
— Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) April 9, 2015

and

.@gillian_lynne has had such an amazing career! Watch her live at http://t.co/0vVig6gzeB #dukfuture
— Dance UK (@DanceUK) April 9, 2015

There were speeches by the great and the good such as Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair of the Arts Council, the educationalist Sir Ken Robinson whom I mentioned in Dance is just as important as Maths 17 Aug 2014 and the great dancer and choreographer Dame Gillian Lynne whom Sir Ken mentioned in his famous TED presentation. There were also performances by great dancers such as Ed Watson to Arthur Pita's choreography for The Feeling's Boy Cried Wolf.

The speakers' list reads like a roll call of the greats of British dance with Mike Baldwin of Rambert, Christopher Hampson of Scottish Ballet, Shobana Jayasingh, David Nixon of Northern Ballet, Matthew Bourne and many more including Andrew Hochauser QC from my world.

The session that appealed most to me was Invest, Create, Innovate which took place at Trinity Laban on Saturday 11 April with discussions on dramaturgy by Akram Khan and David Nixon, Ballet - A Museum or a Creative Powerhouse? with Kevin O'Hare and Christopher Hampson, South Asian Dance and the debate on dancers' pay. I should also have been interested in Charlotte Sexton talk: "Why hasn't dance mastered the dark art of digital?" which took place the previous day.

In the video of the opening night, the presenters indicated that this conference was the start of a process to develop a dance strategy.