SUPPORTING DANCE

Although the pandemic meant another year of uncertainty for Dance across the four UK nations, we continued to listen, learn, and respond to the dance community's needs. We are pleased to have maintained our full staff complement for uninterrupted service and support to dance. Most of our work remained online, particularly when doubts about the impact of Omicron arose in the third and fourth quarter of the year. During a testing time for dance and the dance economy, advocating our member’s needs to DCMS and DfE, funders, performing arts representative bodies and disseminating information on the return to dance studios, teaching and the Freelance Task Force were our key priorities.

One of our proudest and most challenging achievements was DANCE PASSION, a collaboration with BBC Arts to increase public awareness of the diversity, creativity and sheer brilliance of UK Dance in all its forms. Featuring 50 organisations and independent artists, the breadth and scope of dance was celebrated in a BBC 4 highlights show with a total of 6 hours of dance films and filmed performances released over subsequent weeks on iPlayer, and innovative interactive content released weekly and hosted on the BBC Taster platform.

We saw an increase in all memberships other than individual membership which is to be expected in very tough financial times. Our new strategy addresses the needs of the individual membership. The One Dance UK Team is dedicated to listening and aligning our services to best serve the dance community’s needs now and in the future. We remain forthright about this.