Presentation - bad publicity for American dance in Britain and ties to tobacco industry does not help - Editorial

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1996 by Richard Philip

This is about making favorable impressions. Dance is such a glorious subject that I regret those occasions when we inadvertently wind up shooting ourselves in the foot--and a self-inflicted wound misrepresents us when, cap in hand, we approach people who might help.

An example of this came to my attention recently while staying in Britain. I read an infuriating article in the London Times that proclaimed in screaming headlines, DANCING ON AIR, GASPING FOR A BEER AND A SMOKE, with the damning subhead, "Poor diet, unhealthy habits and lack of fitness are crippling Britain's dancers, report says."

The story was a compendium of the most sensational aspects of a serious report, published in October by the Gulbenkian Foundation. Called Fit to Dance?, the study was the brainchild of the late Peter Brinson, who had told me four years ago about his intentions--to discover the extent of health problems among dancers and to recommend changes in the government health-care system. The original intentions were positive, but the newspaper article was destructive, exactly the sort of thing that would delight somebody with an antiart agenda. The photo with the newspaper story only made matters worse, showing five woozy-looking dancers on the floor, suggesting that dancers are about the unhealthiest group of performers imaginable.

And there is, I suspect, a political context to this yellow journalism. A cultural battle is being waged in Britain over the use of money raised in a nationwide arts lottery; huge, helpful sums are being poured into much-needed renovations at Covent Garden, home of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera. (Using lotteries in America to raise money for the arts is worth serious consideration.) But some writers in the British press are screaming "elitism" because tickets at Covent Garden are beyond the means of most of the people who buy lottery tickets. Royal patronage is also a politically loaded topic. SO, portraying dancers in a bad light plays right into the hands of anti-"elitist" factions. Spend the lottery money elsewhere, they say. Unfortunately, and to our shame and loss, we know this scenario--using the arts as a political football--only too well here in the States. (The leading proponent of this abuse, Sen. Jesse Helms, is up for reelection this month; his defeat would be an important victory for American artists.)

This London Times article, however, is not the only example I saw of misrepresentation. The Joffrey Ballet took its cash-cow Billboards to London for two weeks in August and met with some of the worst reviews imaginable. American dance companies, such as New York City Ballet, have faced down British wrath before, but the intensity of these attacks seemed exceptionally ungenerous.

Although Joffrey representatives went out of their way to promote Billboards as "a milestone" and gave press interviews laden with embarrassing flag-waving nonsense about American values in art, the critics in London behaved like a pack of wolves. The Joffrey was being subjected, I suspect, to a bit of Yank bashing, which bad-mannered Brits still consider a jolly blood sport. But, as Clive Barnes suggests in his column on page 118, the British critics may have been reacting to our hubris at having told them for years that the center of world dance was not London but New York City. We also tempted fate by taking such an ill-conceived work as Billboards to London and then shamelessly claiming that it represents the best of the new from America.

Although the season was well intentioned, the international incident that resulted was anything but good for the image of American dance abroad. All of us want to do better than this.

Cigarette money continues to haunt the image of dance. Smoking is a controversial subject, yes, but cigarettes kill an estimated 400,000 people a year in America. The world's largest producer of cigarettes, Philip Morris, is also the single largest contributor to dance, addicting dance companies to their financial support in much the same way that they conspire to addict young people to their deadly products. If saying this seems harsh, then so is lung cancer.

The good news is that dancers actually smoke 8 percent less than their peers in the general population, according to a recent study sponsored by Dance Magazine and reported by Linda Hamilton, Ph.D. (pages 56-60). The study shows that dancers--because of their ongoing concerns with diet, weight, and exercise--are healthier as a group than nondancers; it also points to areas in which we need to spend more time and money helping dancers attain even better health. Dancers also enjoy their good health--only 4 percent are dissatisfied--compared with 10 percent dissatisfaction in the general population. I hope that the findings of this study will be used to reinforce the good while encouraging us to find solutions to some of the thornier issues in the field that we all know about and need to address openly with deeper understanding and compassion.

But the message dance sends to the rest of the world as a result of its addiction to tobacco money is unhealthy, particularly if we are serious at all about finding alternative sources of funding, as some have done. We're so poor, we seem to say, that we'll take handouts from anybody. And we value money so much that we're willing to overlook the damage caused by smoking to the health and safety of our young people. Search the performance programs of these companies for a disclaimer that explains that they take cigarette money--and are grateful for it--but do not endorse smoking. And?