The Arts Council cuts - the damage

Although there are some major losers, there are some real winners here - Hofesh Shechter Company, Wayne McGregor, Company Chameleon (new to the ACE portfolio), Jasmin Vardimon Company, Ballet Lorent, DIG, 2FacedDance, Balbir Singh Dance Company, State of Emergency...

I am bitterly disappointed to see Henri Oguike Dance Company and Manchester's greenroom lose all their ACE funding. The highly regarded Ballet Black, a company I've never had the chance to see, have also lost their full ACE grant.

If anything, those who have come off worst are the 'old guard' of contemporary dance - The Cholmondleys and the Featherstonehaughs, DV8, Michael Clark for example - and classical ballet... with northern ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and the English National Ballet all taking big hits. The Rambert (oddly) survive with a smaller cut.

Some of these businesses are robust enough and have sufficient income from other sources - tickets, merchandise, corporate sponsorship - and will be able to make expenditure cuts; but let's face it, this will involve fewer dancers, less touring and I imagine 'safer' artistic choices for the forseeable.

Other companies will doubtless go into hiatus, if not administration. Henri Oguike has choreographic skills to sell; whether he will any longer be able to pay for dancers, premises, adminsitrative staff etc. is another question: one I'm not sure I want to hear the answer to.

There seems to be an inescapable disconnect also in funding performing companies while cutting the funding of the venues in which they can reasonably be expected to perform. In Manchester, for example, all the venues for small and medium-scale touring (Royal Exchange, Contact Theatre, greenroom) - all except The Lowry - have seen their funding cut.

Now the waiting is over, the waiting starts.