LONDON COLLEGE OF DANCE NETWORK
AGM
Meeting held at St. George’s Hotel, Langham Place
4th September 2010
Present:
Patricia Snowdon, Carole Wheatley Susan, Mitchell-Smith, Lesley Bream, Sue Markendale, Nansi Hannah, Alison Forbes, Ann Bennoch, Elizabeth Griffin, Anna Walters, Mollie Webb, Alison Thompson, Carol Rentoul, Anne Rooney, Becky Diamond, Caroline James, Sophie Macduff, Sue Greenwood, Carolyn Burnell, Diane Rogers, Ros Henderson, Nicki Templem, Frances Porrit
Apologies:
Patricia Whittock, Ann Snell, Jackie Smith-Autard, Nicola Gaines, Fiona Morris-Lavrentides, Claudette Caven, Patricia Caldwell, Lesley Shearer, Olive George, Marigold Tilly, Valerie Major, Dorothy Locke, Dunja Henke, Phrosso Pfister.
Chair’s Report:
Patricia Snowdon welcomed all to the meeting and delivered the sad news that Phrosso, who was due to be the guest speaker, was unable to attend due to ill health but Nansi Hannah very kindly agreed to step into the breach.
Patricia welcomed Susan Mitchell-Smith and Lesley Bream to the committee. She thanked Carole Wheatley for all her work on the newsletter; Sue Markendale is to take over this task.
She also thanked Ann Snell, who, although unable to attend today, organised the reunion.
Election of Officers:
No additional nominations – Carole Wheatley re-elected.
Database:
As agreed last year, Alison Jones, who was introduced by Carole Wheatley, was appointed to collate LCN database. January newsletter sent out by e-mail where possible. Hard copies sent to all others.
Summer newsletter will continue to be sent by post in June.
Re-establishment of London College:
Patricia Snowdon is continuing in the quest for the re-establishment of the college. After meeting with Jackie Smith & Mirella Bartrip it was decided that a privately funded college is the way to go. PS was contacted by ex-LCD student, Nicola Temple (Morgan) suggesting the use of her premises during the day.
It was agreed to that Alison Jones undertake a feasibility study – cost £500.
Jackie Smith has contacted Ken Pickering re- validation which is a real obstacle.
PS then read a letter from Jackie in which her concerns about the lack of expertise in teachers of dance in educational establishments and the need for well trained teachers that LCD produced were voiced.
Outline plan is:
To develop a BA Hons course in an independent college for fee paying students – validated by university – possibly Kent? Graduates would proceed to PGCE or take dance studio positions. We have a fit for purpose building – a dance school in Kent.
ISTD has developed a good Certificate of Dance Education which could form a strong backbone for the college curriculum. We would need to develop a curriculum round this to make it degree worthy but there are some of us who have sufficient experience in writing degree courses to manage this.
PS then asked members present for ideas and contacts to get project off the ground.
Could LCN instigate fundraising for bursaries & scholarships?
Jackie Smith suggested a co-operative should be set up – if anyone wishes to be involved please get in touch.
Future of Network:
Updating of website is in progress – any contributions welcome.
New e-mail address lcdn@live.com
Alison Francis has set up a Facebook page.
PS has asked a former pupil to design new logo, will circulate on e-mail.
Next meeting Saturday 3rd September 2011
AOB:
Nansi could get in touch with Minister for Arts.
Mirella warned of approaching University of Arts as they have very specific ideas and no appreciation of the curriculum structure needed to accommodate dance.
Guest Speaker:
Nansi Hannah gave a fascinating and amusing account on her life as a founder member of London College and her career as a dance teacher. We were all in awe of the stoicism required to pursue one’s hopes of becoming a dance teacher in war-time Britain.
The meeting finished with thanks to Nansi.
Guest Speaker Nansi Hannah:
London College started with five students in 1944 whilst WW2 was still at its height. In spite of being under constant bombardment in her Southampton home Nansi managed to pass Grade 5 RAD. As there was no chance of carrying on with her dancing, Nansi obtained a scholarship to Reading University to study Horticulture but did not take it up. Following which her mother took her to Lees Place, South Audley Street, London for an audition with the Cones who were just starting the college at Rawden Hall, Holyport near Maidenhead. Nansi joined in January 1945.
All the students had domestic duties each room had to be cleaned. The speediest person grabbed the biggest brooms thus making the task easier. In her haste to grab the biggest broom one day Nansi hit another girl over the head; Miss Heyworth found out and was not amused! She shared a room with Stella Porter. The adjacent rooms were occupied by Phrosso, Barabara Turner and Mollie Webb. Nansi devoted much energy to directing the mice, of which there were many, under her door into the other rooms.
The staff were Miss Heyworth, Madge Atkinson, Joan Chapman, Nada Haggard, Miss Lloyd-Owen. The kitchen arrangements were rather unorthodox. Mrs. Arnott, the cook, had a daughter Portia who had a horse, which often visited the kitchen.
The students celebrated VE Day by punting on the Thames at Cookham and joining the village celebrations on the green at Holyport. Soon after the college moved to The Lodge, Holyport where Pat Hutchinson joined the staff; she was about 25 years old and a wonderful teacher. Margaret Siley taught speech training, Lydia Sokolova taught National with a cockney accent! Cherry Morrell and Janet Butcher were the pianists.
The students gave performances at Maidenhead Town Hall and Cambridge Arts Theatre this connection was thanks to Mary Norrish, a student, whose father was a professor at Emmanuel College. Teaching practice was in Maidenhead, Godstowe and Lees Place. After finishing at Lees Place she used her 2/6d lunch money to buy a ticket for Covent Garden.
At the end of the third year in 1947, they organized a dance which was attended by many students from Cambridge. Just before the dance Nansi and Phrosso started the Old Students’ Association. Phrosso’s father lived in the Great Eastern Hotel and gave them a room for the first meeting. Nansi was Head Student of London College from September 1947 to July 1948.
Nansi’s first job was at Nottingham Grammar School; she hated Nottingham at first but stayed in the post for 10 years. Since then she has done many things including opera at the university and among the pupils she has taught are Geoff Hoon and Ed Balls. She joined the staff at GPDST and was there for 30 years. She is still amazingly active and used to be seen walking her dogs at 5am in Sherwood Forest.
Profile
Mirella Bartrip
LCD student 1967 -70
Director of Dance Trinity Laban
Dear Old Students,
Thank you for asking me to contribute an article to our newsletter this year. I am only too aware of all the interesting and amazing things you are all doing, and I am greatly honoured to be featured this time around. Though higher education has not been the sole focus of my life in dance, this article focuses on that since this is the context of my current post as Director of Dance at Trinity Laban.
I don’t think of my life in dance as a career: for me, this implies a deliberately planned progression of jobs and activities, and I’ve not done that; rather, I’ve taken up jobs and activities that I felt challenged by, and where there is opportunity for developing new, innovative ideas. I love dance: dancing, making dance, teaching dance, watching dance, working with teams to develop opportunities in dance, advocating for dance. So, in the 41 years since I left college (goodness, that can’t be true, can it?), I have dedicated my life to it!
The current time is indeed a momentous one in higher education. Since 1966, the right of access to higher education has been enshrined in legislation, a given for all of us, free at the point of entry. This is about to change, and personally, I cannot support the ethos and direction that is being taken for higher education by the current coalition government. However, it is reality, and as I think back over my life in dance, I can see that my work and actions have been guided by the various contexts in which I have had to operate, and I guess this will be no different.
In developing a structure for writing this article, I have characterized the decades – necessarily with rather broad brush because space is limited – drawing attention to selected work I’ve been involved with, and acknowledging those (too many to name here, unfortunately) to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for the opportunities they have given me and the trust they have placed in me.
The 1960s
For those of us looking for specialist higher education studies in dance that chimed with our desire to train to the highest level for entry to the dance profession/art form, there was little choice through the 1950s and 60s. Add to this the struggle to secure recognition for dance as a subject worthy of study at higher education level, and you have in a nutshell, the difficulties facing those in dance education and training during that time. Anita Heyworth, Dr Marion North, and many others have been central figures in achieving for dance the status it now enjoys within higher education and within our culture. I thank them, and all those who have committed themselves to developing higher education opportunities for us all, believing as they did in the importance of education and training for future generations.
The 1970s
Those of us in dance education and training in higher education were committed to gaining status for dance as a subject worthy of study at degree level: there was the issue of whether ‘practice’ was credible HE study; the problem of academic disciplines through which dance could be analysed being adopted as the sole basis for claiming the academic rigour of ‘practice’; the question of how to integrate the traditions of the academy (academe) and the conservatoire (vocational training).
Following on from the work that Anita Heyworth had pioneered and achieved in securing the ‘A’ course and its Cert Ed qualification, London College developed its B.Ed during the latter part of the 70s. I was centrally involved in this, together with Francine Watson-Coleman and Lynn Maree who led the team under Phrosso. And it’s this that gave me the grounding for what I have gone on to do in higher education. I remember one night, staying up in Bedford in preparation for the CNAA (Council for National Academic Awards) validation of the B.Ed as an honours degree, with Francine putting me through my paces, checking out the coherence of my arguments in response to potential questions from the CNAA panel. I realised then, that we had to be articulate advocates for dance in order to influence its future, that we wouldn’t survive as an art form and discipline within higher education, if we couldn’t stand equally alongside our peers.
The 1980s
So it was, that after leaving my post at London College in 1981, and after freelancing for a year or so, I took up a post at Laban, teaching classical ballet, jazz and teaching studies on the contemporary dance programmes. The focus of the BA (Hons) Dance Theatre was practice-based, but with a substantial number of hours dedicated to theoretical subjects and a formidable essay assessment load (in addition to the practical assessments) which together had established the credibility of the programme as degree level. In 1985, I was appointed Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Dance Theatre programme, with responsibility for the continuing development of the programme.
Through the 1980s, Laban continued to develop its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes with a more confidently overt focus on practice as the defining characteristic. Practice had the capacity to generate theory, we claimed, and practice could be interrogated by means other than the analytical methods belonging to other disciplines. Here, developments in the legacy of Rudolf Laban’s work have been central. At Laban this has developed as Choreological Studies, where learning in and about the structures and features intrinsic to dance are an integral part of studio practice, used to guide and refine performance, and to stimulate creative practice in choreography, as well as generate dialogue about the nature of the practice. Despite the new approaches being developed, theoretical studies as evidence of degree worthiness continued to prevail in the CNAA model for degree programmes.
The 1990s
The structure of UK higher education was to change with the dissolution of the binary system (CNAA/University): the polytechnics gained University status, and in the main, colleges of HE such as Laban, were required to seek University validation for their degree programmes. Rather than focussing on the negative aspects of government’s decision to roll this out sooner than had been anticipated (which was to leave many colleges vulnerable to closure), at Laban we focused on optimising our position as a provider of specialist contemporary dance training. There were some plusses to be acknowledged: practice-based and creative/experimental subjects were brought into the University sector via the polytechnics; there were new opportunities to explore in our specialist context, the creative potential for developing different kinds of practice in dance and dance-related areas, where dance in its own right could be brought to the fore.
Marion North’s challenge to me in 1991 as Principal Lecturer (I had been appointed to this role in the late 1980s) to draft the institutional mission for Laban in preparation for seeking and research degree programmes, was my first significant task in this role. Having safely secured validation of our programmes with City University London in 1992, we had secured a partner with whom we have gone on to develop over the years many new initiatives and programmes of study.
In 1994, I was successful in my application for the post of Vice Principal (Academic), later reconfigured as Deputy Director & Dean of Studies. In this role, I was responsible for overseeing the development of all programmes, and for putting in place structures to monitor and maintain quality and standards throughout our portfolio of HE education and training provision. During this period I continued to teach classical ballet, teaching studies, and by now, I was responsible for the Education in Dance module at Masters level. Delivering at this level is demanding, requiring up-to-date knowledge of research, but it was also enormously rewarding, providing opportunity for dialogue with students who were dance professionals in their own right; it was such a privilege to engage in intellectual debate with them and to have access to their ideas, creative thinking and aspirations – it was a truly inspirational time in my teaching life.
The 2000s
Dance within HE is now acknowledged as a significant area of study. Laban and other specialist HE dance providers have gone on to develop exciting new models of study, evidencing that intellectual engagement is indeed integral in the activity of dancing: effective performance (dancing) – performance that is refined through informed practice – is simply not possible without such engagement!
The landscape has changed: whilst for good reason, relevant theoretical studies remain a core aspect of degree level dance study, they are no longer the defining characteristic; rather, theory forms part of a palette from which students can draw to reflect on and develop their practice. Undergraduate students’ dissertations can be projects rather than written theses; new practice-based areas of study enable students to develop a range of skills and knowledge that will fit them for their portfolio life in dance. Since 2001, our Masters offer at Laban has included a range of named practice-based degrees – Dance Performance, Choreography, Dance Theatre, Scenography – as well as the first ever Masters programme in Dance Science. Last into the fold in 2010 was our MA and MFA programmes in Creative Practice, alongside our continuing research degree programme which now offers opportunity for developing practice as research and interrogation and exploration of creative and artistic processes. The world of technology is an integral part of dance making and production – dance and culture are inextricably intertwined.
As Director of Dance at Trinity Laban since September 2010 (Laban and Trinity College of Music merged to form Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in 2005), I am faced with yet new challenges: the demands of the new post which carries with it responsibility for all the activities that take place in the Faculty of Dance at the Laban site, and alongside this, is the imminent, changing landscape of higher education. At the time of writing, advocacy for dance could not be more important. Together with my colleagues at Trinity Laban, we are responding to the call from the DCMS/DfE for contributions to the debate in the review of cultural education: we continue to argue the case for dance as a central dimension of our culture at all stages of young people’s learning, as well as emphasising the importance of vocational training opportunity at pre and higher education levels.
My life/work continues to be a very rewarding experience, if at times a little more stressful than I had bargained for or would like. I intend to see Laban into this new era of higher education which, though at this moment presents challenges we have not previously faced, we must shape to create the best possible provision and opportunities for our dance artist practitioners of the future.