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Farewell from DTP - and a few thoughts

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The UK has two organisations - both essentially networks of theatres collaborating to support and present  touring productions - that support touring dance. Dance Consortium generally represents international tours to larger venues and DTP - Dance Touring Partnership - has generally supported a mix of international and national companies touring to mid-size venues. 

In 2017/18, Dance Touring Partnership suddenly rewrote their blurb to imply that they had always promoted all kinds of performance, rebranded as DTP - although their full name remained embedded in their web address - and toured a musical. Their last tour. 

They have now published a farewell message on their website,  so whether they are a dance touring organisation or not they are no more. 

You can read it in full here - DTP Farewell

It is not clear to what extent this is the outcome of the Covid-19 crisis or simply the Covid-hastened culmination of a wider crisis in touring dance in the UK, with companies and venues buckling under years of arts cuts and underfunding and the correspondent dwindling in dance audiences that has been hard not to notice merely from sitting in auditoria. 

The drought in international touring (outside London) has, I think,  helped create a perfect storm where much UK dance has started to look dated, undernourished and behind the curve, and dance audiences have been deprived of variety and excitement, not to mention audience development - not that there is not still tremendous work out there.  

The new focus on community and inclusion and representation seems to be creating a further identity crisis where UK dance companies and producing venues generally are questioning every aspect of what they have been doing and making changes. 

One of the key changes seems to be identifying that the people that see work in theatres are not the 'right' audience, and worse, by doing nothing other than going to the theatre to see the work produced for theatres are somehow leading culprits in excluding that elusive other audience - the one that generally often doesn't go to the theatre (generally known as the 'community'). 

Ultimately, DTP's tours will be missed - and it's not clear what will take their place in supporting such activities. 


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