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Management consultants urge their clients to seek different perspectives on their business. Is this advice equally valid when it comes to watching dance? And, if beneficial, should the knowledge of where people might sit influence choreographers in what they create and dancers in how they perform? Is there a distance (either vertically or horizontally) from the stage where the relationship between audience and performers becomes so tenuous that it is a breach of management responsibility to the paying public to sell tickets for such seats?

It might be argued that these issues apply equally to the other performing arts. The one profound difference is that with dance the audience has paid to see movement that remains a kissing cousin of mime. Even if you can’t clearly see the singers, actors or musicians on stage, you can still hear the sounds they are making. But, no matter how wonderful the accompanying music, it is probably not the primary reason why you have booked to see a dance performance.

From a financial perspective, bums on seats, no matter where they are, equal pounds in the box office purse. Eliminating certain seating from sale in the larger venues would probably necessitate others costing even more. The result, dance, and ballet in particular, is in even greater danger of being accused of being an elitist art. Yet there is a point where, if you are sitting up in the 'Gods', the figures on stage become meaningless unless you have the eyes of an eagle. Alternatively you can sit too close. That is unless you want to concentrate only on the orchestra and/or the artists’ feet and ankles.

If we want to interest more children in dance then we have to make sure they can see it properly. Maybe, like supermarkets car parks, certain areas should be reserved as children seating, at least for some performances, in order that the little ones have a decent view of the action on stage. Otherwise the likelihood is that they will remember the visit to the Christmas Nutcracker more for the ice cream in the interval than for the magic of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s performance.

Movie choreographers like Busby Berkeley purposely created intricate patterns designed especially to be seen from an aerial perspective. Similarly, some modern works, like Mark Morris’ pieces, contain movements and outlines that can be appreciated differently depending on whether you are seated in the stalls or in the higher circles (sometimes the best place to see his work). It may be that this is more often the case with contemporary dance than with 19th century narrative ballet as traditionally produced. If so, does that say something about where the classics should be staged? In examining this could ENB’s ventures in the round at the Royal Albert Hall be the way forward? It might also be a clue as to how new venues should be designed. Would it be better for these to be smaller and better raked, say like the more intimate spaces of the ROH’s Linbury and Clore studios?

As usual this all comes back to politics and the subject of government subsidy. Without decent investment of public money dance will continue, at least in our larger theatres, to remain inaccessible to some, even if they pay to see it.