My former colleague John Ashford, who has died aged 79, was a key figure in contemporary dance in the UK and beyond, both as director of the Place theatre in London (1986-2009) and founder-director of Aerowaves (1996-2022), a European dance network spanning 34 countries.
Born in Guildford, Surrey, to Quaker parents who were both pacifists, June (nee Skinner) and William Ford, a probation officer, John went to Woking county grammar school for boys, then did a degree in English at Leicester University. He later used the surname Ashford because of Equity rules.
After brief jobs in TV and fringe theatre, he became Time Out magazine’s first theatre editor in the early 1970s. He then became a manager at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, before taking on the role of theatre director at the ICA (1979-84), where he encountered experimental dance and became convinced of the centrality of the body to contemporary performance.
From there he went on to direct the Place theatre, part of a complex that included the London Contemporary Dance theatre and school, where his ambition – at the time almost unthinkable – was to establish a year-round dance programme.
By 1990 he had launched the Spring Loaded and Turning World seasons, for UK and international artists respectively, followed in 1993 by Resolution, which brought many talents to light, Wayne McGregor and Hofesh Shechter among them. The programmes were diverse in style, variable in quality, and stuffed with new work and names. During John’s directorship, the Place became the place to get a feel for what and who was “happening” in contemporary dance.
Noticing an international groundswell of activity in his field, John went on to set up Aerowaves in 1996, alongside Anna Arthur, an arts manager whom he had first employed in 1993 and who would remain his principal co-worker throughout his career. Aerowaves joined up John’s counterparts in the European scene, and became his main focus after leaving the Place in 2009. He launched the country-hopping Spring Forward festival in 2011, forged partnerships with South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, initiated a European dance writing project (through which I became his colleague) and, most recently, a programme to upskill emerging producers.
Forward-looking and lateral-thinking, John was energised by startups and new ventures, always looking for fresh talent and opportunities. He had a reputation for dreaming up improbable projects and pulling them off: the big-bucks Place prize for dance (2004-13), for example; or, barely a month after the first Covid lockdown, shifting the entire 2020 Spring Forward programme on to a then obscure platform called Zoom.
If history is typically remembered by its headline makers, John worked at the other end: at the entry point. He saw value not only in the few who achieved public recognition, but in the sea of others who did not. “I stand by them too,” he once said. “Every ripple changes the beach.”
John was made CBE in 2002, and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the UK National Dance Awards in 2022.
He is survived by his wife, Megumi Shimanuki, a language interpreter, whom he met in 1974 when she was a performer at the Royal Court, and married in 1977.
