When BalletBoyz announce a 19-venue UK tour for 2022 and book Storyhouse in Chester and the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield but yet again miss Manchester/Salford one has to start asking questions:
1) Does Manchester now lack a sufficiently robust and diverse dance audience that venues can no longer justify booking 'every' dance tour into what is supposed to be one of the UK's cultural powerhouse cities? Frankly this isn't a new development and it's one I decided to park during Covid but I suspect may be even more marked post-Covid.
2) Manchester's lack of a 'dedicated' dance venue is impacting on dance programming for the city as a whole? The Lowry is meant to be the dedicated dance venue but dance is just part of a wider-ranging offer for a generalist theatre; CONTACT have yet to resume the dance programming they offered before they went offline for three years; and HOME have never delivered on whatever 'commitment' to dance programming they tenuously claim. And yes I know they are Manchester's theatre for Hofesh Shechter.
3) There is a lack of dance-specific programming expertise and intent in the city. This combined with the loss of Dance as a subject from the National Curriculum, the loss of dance as a taught subject at MMU (although this was long-based on their now-closed Crewe campus and the evaporation of Manchester's dance development agency - the always under-performing Dance Initiative Greater Manchester - into some 'community development' element of Company Chameleon - and an obtusely fractured and obscure dance ecology within the area - has meant that dance in Manchester is an increasingly niche interest.
To the general eye and to the occasional dance audience-member things may seem to be just fine and as normal but I notice (and simmer with quiet rage).