Across my career I have worked in the realms of presenting, touring and producing dance works. As a result, I feel I possess some knowledge of the complex dynamics that govern the industry from the perspective of both programmers and artists and understand how difficult it is to mount a tour for dance.
The balance of being able to get your work programmed within a consecutive block of time before you have confirmed your funding either for creation, touring, or both, feels precarious. Even once funding is secured, touring in certain regions can feel like a Herculean feat, with minimal fees that barely cover a fraction of presenting costs. It can sometimes take up to two years to mount a viable tour as you try to make the (aforementioned) components align.
Alongside these logistical concerns exist more nuanced challenges, particularly a tour’s aesthetics. Of course, any programmer must consider the quality, theme and general aesthetic of everything they programme – but some groups face additional challenges, including the “invisible barriers” of race, ethnicity and gender. In recent years my work has been dominated by the work of black female artists and unfortunately this has presented a blockade of stereotyping and tokenism. For example, all the artists that Uprise Rebel represents make contemporary dance work. Some lean into the use of urban or cultural genres (i.e. West and South African styles – though in its contemporary form), but overall, the artists are making contemporary dance theatre works.
To this day, when trying to engage some venues, I still get a response that states, it’s not their type of work, or they aren’t programming urban work at present… At this stage I know they haven’t watched the footage, or if they have it feels like they might have a narrower view of what contemporary dance should be. I cannot accurately say why this happens and I feel presenters need to be honest about it as I would very much like to understand: Is it that they just don’t like the work? Is it that they feel their audiences won’t like it, or is it that they just don’t want to take the risk or the extra workload of marketing a work that sits outside of their standard format?
Earlier this year I took Uchenna Dance’s work, The Head Wrap Diaries, to The Netherlands where we performed four shows. The theatres were small scale, but we sold out at over 70% capacity each night. Bear in mind, this is the first time we have presented the show outside of the UK and, essentially, we had no name in the country. So, 70+% ticket sales on venue capacity is a great achievement. Why does this all matter? Well, The Head Wrap Diaries is inspired by black women and our hair. The dancers are three black women, and there are references to our experiences and stories and jokes that many black women will instantly connect with.
However, our audiences were majority white and Dutch. But this didn’t matter because as I sat in the audience for every one of the four shows, I saw people engaged, I saw them laugh at many of the jokes and also laugh at other parts I myself never found funny. And at the end I saw standing ovations. The work was inspired by black hair, but it was created to transcend ethnicity and just be a good time show; this is what many presenters miss when they gatekeep the “acceptable” aesthetics for their audiences.
Quite honestly, I feel that all the artists under the Uprise Rebel banner are successful in their own right and we will continue to be so because the work is high quality, interesting, relevant and accessible (to general audiences). We do feel as Black and Global Majority women that we must be three times better and work four times harder to be on the same playing field as some of our counterparts, but if that can usher any type of paradigm change, then we hold the mantle with pride.
Photo: The Head Wrap Diaries
Grace Okereke is Founder and Executive Producer of Uprise Rebel and has been in the dance sector for over two decades, with her career evolving from performer and teacher to manager, with the latter being the predominant role.
She founded her own company, Uprise Rebel, which supports Black female choreographers and administrators, as well as developing inclusive audiences. The overarching aim is to challenge the structures and hierarchical archetype that currently is in place, and to set a new paradigm for the representative faces of the contemporary dance sector.
Outside of her work with Uprise Rebel, she is an independent producer and has worked with organisations including FABRIC, Birmingham International Dance Festival, Horizon Showcase, Diverse City and One Dance UK and holds a Fellowship with ISPA representing England.