The Place constantly reviews its activity, aiming to continue giving the best support to the world’s most promising dance artists, and to make best use of our resources. As part of this ongoing review, we have now instituted major changes to our services in support of dance on film, and closed our Videoworks department.

In recent years Videoworks has fulfilled three functions: a presenter of dance film work, a reference and video resource and a performance documentation facility.

Presenting dance film work
For more than 10 years, The Place played a key role in establishing dance film as a genre recognised in its own right.  We have supported artists, provided resources and expertise, commissioned films and provided a major annual dance film showcase.  In good part thanks to The Place’s work, there are now other significant organisational players supporting the genre, including Capture and South East.

To continue supporting the growth of dance film would require the investment of new resources, and may move us into direct competition with organisations with whom we would work better in partnership.

The Place has therefore decided to withdraw from its role of promoting dance film as a specific genre.  Instead, we will commit resources to creating a flexible system for supporting selected individual artists. One result of this is that The Place will no longer present the Dance on Screen festival.

(For more information about other dance film festivals, contact Capture, South East Dance or the other external links on this page).

Reference and video resource
As part of an AHRC-funded process, The Place and Laban have been working together to re-house our extensive ‘Videoworks Collection’ at Laban’s library.  The collection spans more than 15 years of recorded performances and is now partly accessible at Laban (www.laban.org/building/library__archive.phtml) with more stock being added gradually. The Videoworks reference library and copying facility has been closed to the public facility since April 2006. Our Edit Suite facility remains available for hire either with or without an editor.

Performance documentation facility
The Place continues to offer a range of options for recording live dance performances at the Robin Howard Dance Theatre.  We are committed to the preservation of live performance recordings, and work both with artists and with Laban on the archiving of this material.

These changes have been arrived at through careful consideration of the full range of The Place’s activities and services, and the changing dance ecology. As we strengthen The Place’s ability to support individual dance artists whom staff have identified as having particular potential, we recognise that these artists will wish to use the full range of new technology and media in creating and performing their work, and The Place will need the resources to respond to and support this interest. 

We are confident that refocusing The Place’s services in this way will help us improve the services we offer to dance artists and audiences in the coming years.