ARTS
Steps towards oblivion
Scottish Ballet will die if the Scottish Arts Council withdraws its funding. John Parry reports If what is already in place is allowed its allotted time span — that is between now and 28 August — Scottish Ballet will be killed off. And the Scottish Arts Council, by cancelling the funding of one of Britain's finest dance companies with a long-standing international reputation, will be denounced for a savage act of vandal- ism.
The chairman of Scottish Ballet, Oona Ivory, and the chairman of the SAC, Mag- nus Lin'dater, are not talking to each other at the moment. The board of Scottish Bal- let have been intemperately labelled 'a real bunch of bastards' in a now much-quoted explosion by a certain member of the SAC. While the situation that has developed has come about primarily because of a lack of money at the SAC and the resulting need to cut the numbers of Scottish orches- tras, this is not just another 'arts in crisis' story. There is also the question of the very nature of Scottish Ballet, whether it should continue its 40-year tradition as a classical ballet company or whether it should change and become a much cheaper to run contemporary dance group. According to Oona Ivory, the messages from the SAC, particularly its director Seona Reid, are very clear. She believes the SAC wants them to become a sort of `MacRamberf dance company, and she also believes that the SAC philosophy is that the arts should be used as a political barometer dealing with some of the more controversial issues of the day. But, as she said to me, if they create, for instance, a dance about male rape and take it to Kirkcaldy the local peo- ple are not necessarily going to rush out to buy tickets because it is a subject they have always wanted to know about. She also made the point that a company such as the Nederlands Dance Theatre does wonderful work but has a different kind of population to serve. The Financial Times's ballet critic, Clement Crisp, was appalled at the thought of Scottish Ballet becoming a contempo- rary company. He considers them to be an important and valuable part of our cultural life and that they should be properly sup- ported financially rather than being sub- jected to the 'idiot caprices' of the SAC. He thinks we already have too many con- temporary dance ensembles, most of them indifferent to bad, with no-hopers encour- aged to believe that they might have some sort of creative careers.
However, it would be quite unfair just to slap a 'big bad bully' label on the SAC. They are working within severe financial restraints. Magnus Linklater believes that the ballet board is too inflexible and does not recognise the realities of a grant system that has been at a standstill for years. Both he and the SAC's Seona Reid would say that, while it is not for them to dictate what kind of dance Scottish Ballet should be performing, it is up to the company to question what can be done within its bud- get.
But fundamental as this issue may be to Scottish Ballet's future, the real question about whether it has a future at all rests on the now stalled negotiations that have been going on for more than a year. They have centred on the long-acknowledged fact that Scotland has more orchestras than it can afford. An apparently workable scheme was drawn up whereby the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet would share resources and save money. All the companies were having financial problems and two of them, Scot- tish Opera and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, would have been in serious cri- sis at the end of last year if the SAC had not stepped in and worked out a longer- term solution to put them on a more stable basis.
Then a remarkable offer from govern- ment came their way. The then secretary of `Five minutes, my Lord.' state for Scotland, Michael Forsythe, offered an extra £2.4 million a year across the four companies providing they could come up with a solution that would guaran- tee no more returns of the begging bowl. Given the cutbacks elsewhere in Scottish budgets, it was an extraordinary develop- ment. So the National Companies Imple- mentation Group including accountants, representatives of the Scottish Office and the SAC, which had been set up to solve the problems of the four national compa- nies, came up with what they felt was a sound solution which would stop the need for any future begging bowl.
The idea was to merge the full-time con- tract orchestra of Scottish Opera with the part-time freelance orchestra of Scottish Ballet. The merger would produce a 55- strong band that would be supplemented for performances as and when necessary using the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to help fill in. It was designed to cover all eventualities.
Reaching that point took a year of dis- cussions for, as Magnus Linklater explained, rearranging orchestras is a huge- ly complicated business. They had to look at scheduling, contracts, unwritten agree- ments, the legal position, the cost of redun- dancies and endless opinions were sought on both sides. Linldater believes that Scot- tish Ballet were convinced it was an attempted takeover by Scottish Opera and that they would be asked to pay much more for their share of the costs of a permanent orchestra than their cheaper arrangement with their freelance band in the past. This band, incidentally, was regarded by many people as being of a less than desirable standard.
However, the National Companies Implementation Group had recognised this cost problem and said that any shortfall would be made up. It was not in anyone's interest to find a solution that would penalise one of the companies. The whole point of the long, tortuous, infinitely com- plicated exercise was to put them all on a financially even keel.
The end of the saga came at the final meeting of the NCIG on 19 June. The other three companies gave an unequivocal `yes' to the arrangements but Scottish Bal- let refused in spite of a telephone call from Linklater to Ivory the night before pleading with her not to reject it. Linklater was deeply depressed by the outcome and said that Scottish Ballet never produced a set of figures to show how they would be worse off.
Ivory said that to enter an open-ended agreement for the future would increase core costs, reduce their financial flexibility, have severe detrimental effects on their artistic future and have serious legal impli- cations for her board unless there were firm written assurances in relation to the costs. The other three companies would gain, she said. Scottish Ballet would lose.
It was after all this that the 'real bunch of bastards' remark was made during the St Magnus arts festival on Orkney by a person from the SAC. Oona Ivory wants the talks to start again. Magnus Linklater says that whole process has come to an end — 19 June was an absolute deadline. But he has not closed the door.
In the meantime, the SAC meeting on 28 August will almost certainly have a recom- mendation before it from the dance panel to cease funding the Scottish Ballet. That will mean the instant death of a company that has toured the world to huge acclaim, earns the warmest praise at home and has already delighted the critics this year with La Sylphide and Cranko's Romeo and Juliet.
There is no question that this is a cultur- al catastrophe just waiting to happen. What about the tradition of compromise?
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