Sadler's Wells are nothing if not on trend. The theatre's latest project is a dance competition in which the contestants enter by posting clips of their work on YouTube, with the winner decided by the public voting online.
It would be easy to dismiss the Global Dance contest as a gimmick. But simply by offering a prize of £2,000 and the chance to perform in the theatre's 2010 Sampled programme, the Wells has arguably come up with a fabulous scheme for flagging up its own cool credentials – and, more importantly, for diverting punters to its own website.
It seems to me a genuine and honest project, one that responds very smartly to the current state of dance. Historically, the profession has been notoriously insular in the way it has judged and promoted its talent. Examination boards, vocational schools, company directors, theatre programmers and critics have all converged to form a power structure, which has largely determined the success or failure of young dancers and choreographers.
Today, that system is undermined on all sides. Dance as an art form has fractured into an almost ungovernable variety of styles and genres - physical theatre, hip-hop, conceptual dance, cross-cultural dance. And just as many of these styles have found their own platforms and methods of organisation, their audiences have a multiplied and grown in power. With the proliferation of dance on YouTube, dance websites and blogs, everyone now has a voice.
Sadler's Wells, as the UK's leading dance venue, is rightly trying to tap into this new culture. The Place theatre already made the first move when it established an audience prize as part of its annual choreographic awards. But the Wells scheme goes further. Even though a trio of professional judges have whittled the entries down to a short list of 10, it will be the public alone who vote for the winner.
That said, the concept has some flaws. Across the shortlisted entries, for instance, there are dramatic variations in the quality of filming and editing that may influence the voting, and some of the choreography sits much more naturally within the format of a video clip online than that of a live performance. Take Arthur Sempbwa's hip-hop quartet, filmed on the South Bank, who make a far more obvious impact than the eight dancers in Michael Miler's piece, although the latter's choreography is far more sophisticated. And there are some entries, such as Deborah Kelly's Tank Man Tango, that make sense as film, but which I can't imagine expanded into live theatre.
But in other respects the Global Dance contest is wonderfully democratic. It brings 10 new names into the arena, and at the same time honours the theatre's own public by giving them the power to vote. One of Sadler's Wells finest achievements is the loyal, informed and adventurous audience that it has built up over the last decade, and it's good that this audience is given at least one chance to decide what they see on the stage. Above all, unlike the glitzy gladiatorial drama of TV shows such as How Do you Solve a Problem Like Maria?, you get the idea that it really is all about developing young dance artists, not about exploiting them for publicity and PR points.
