© John Slater Ballet into the 21st Century Conference Ballet.co magazine coverage Ballet into the 21st Century forum... to link with the second Ballet Artistic Directors conference. Go and have your say in where ballet should heading. First Toronto Conference Dance East website

Dance East describes the event as a “remarkable act of unity”. Artistic directors almost never meet as a group: there has only been one previous such gathering, last June in Toronto, hosted by the National Ballet of Canada. The Snape event will be considerably larger.

The artistic directors expected at Snape are: Boris Akimov (Bolshoi Ballet), John Alleyne (Ballet British Columbia), Frank Andersen (Royal Danish Ballet), Reid Anderson (Stuttgart Ballet), Mark Baldwin (Rambert Dance Company), David Bintley (Birmingham Royal Ballet), Dinna Bjorn (Finnish National Ballet), Christopher Bruce (Rambert Dance Company), Ricardo Bustamente (Ballet de Santiago, Chile), Iracity Cardoso (Gulbenkian Ballet, Portugal), Richard Cragun (DeAnima Ballet da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Didier Deschamps (Ballet de Lorraine, France), Wayne Eagling (Dutch National Ballet), Espen Giljane (Norwegian National Ballet), Kevin Irving (Goteburg Ballet), Marc Jonkers (National Ballet of Portugal), James Kudelka (National Ballet of Canada), Ivan Liska (Bayerisches Staatsballett, Munich), David McAllister (Australian Ballet), Kevin McKenzie (American Ballet Theatre), Jean-Christophe Maillot (Les Ballets de Monte Carlo), Mikko Nissinen (Boston Ballet), David Nixon (Northern Ballet Theatre), Madeline Onne (Royal Swedish Ballet), Ashley Page (Scottish Ballet), Matz Skoog (English National Ballet)

• The globalisation of ballet, the implications of companies having similar repertoires and the implications for distinctiveness and survival.
• The very traditional cultures of ballet companies and the problems of hierarchy.
• The development of the Artistic Directors of the future and of better educated, more ‘empowered’ and more confident dancers.
• The management of creativity and the nurturing of new choreography within the companies. The implications for director/choreographers and their creativity, when they direct a company.
• The gaps between ballet and contemporary dance, historians, critics and academics?  Developing better communication and dialogue across the dance community.
• The appropriate balance between audiences’ needs and those of artists.

Last May’s Past Present Future (PPF) conference in Toronto, hosted by the National Ballet of Canada, was a forerunner to the Snape event. The first of its kind, the PPF participants included several of those who will be at the rural retreat. It identified a number of issues, which will also be discussed at Snape, notably dancer education and the management of creativity. On the face of it there is one key difference: the Toronto event focused considerably on the issue of engaging new and more diverse audiences. There was also an open session, which included public participation. There will be no equivalent session at Snape. The organisers argue that it will be more of a working weekend: that, while the Canadian gathering identified broad issues, those at Snape will be engaging with specific approaches.

If ballet is to flourish in a new century, it needs to foster a lively culture of questioning and of irreverence. The art is on an ebb tide and its practitioners have realised that it has a deep-seated creative problem; that, in the words of several of those who will be at Snape, “ballet is stuck”. The art is very much on the fringes of public consciousness, it is overly self-referential, and the extent of its engagement, even with the other arts, is open to question.

In the weeks leading to the rural retreat, Ballet.co magazine will carry a broad range of opinion from company directors, from choreographers and from distinguished dance writers. The audience view is pivotal. Add your voice at our Ballet into the 21st Century Forum. The participants at Snape will be very aware of your views...