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Richard Alston for hire: 'Who will let an elderly deaf man loose on their dancers?'

The newly knighted choreographer is shutting his company due to cuts and has snapped his achilles tendon. But he’s full of optimism about the future

I’m expecting Richard Alston to be angry, dejected, or at least a little perturbed. The 70-year-old choreographer recently announced he would be closing his company next year, not out of choice, but because of Arts Council England funding cuts. The company had just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and 50 years of Alston being a choreographer, the quality of work as fine as ever. Alastair Macaulay, former chief dance critic of the New York Times, called it “unequivocally the grimmest news for British dance this century”. It seemed utterly sad, at this stage in Alston’s life and career, for him to have the rug pulled from under his feet.

But Alston is not angry. In fact, there was an element of hara-kiri: Alston was part of the decision. His company’s funding is tied to that of the Place, the dance organisation where he is based, and the ACE stipulated that the money allocated to Alston from the pot should be more than halved, effectively killing the company. “I knew that if I didn’t agree to do this, there was a threat that the Place would not get its funding,” he says. “The issue is that, technically speaking, the Arts Council has no method to fund an older artist.”

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2BVKMFX
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