One Perspective, Many Voices

Abstract

London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS) opened in 1966 in modest premises in Berners Place, close to Oxford Street in central London, moving to The Place (near Euston Station), the location with which it is most associated, in 1969. Both authors of Changing the Face of British Dance: Fifty Years of London Contemporary Dance School worked at the school in its early days: Richard Bannerman, for a short time as Promotion Secretary, and Henrietta Bannerman, who had studied at the Graham School in New York in the early 1960s, for several years as school secretary, choreographer, and teacher of technique. After an absence of some years and following postgraduate studies, Henrietta returned in 2005 as head of research and has published widely on the work of Martha Graham. Both authors, then, are in a position to write with some authority on the first fifty years of the school, mapping the school’s growth from a small, privately funded venture to one of the UK’s leading professional training schools for contemporary dance. The book takes a chronological approach, beginning with the genesis of the school in the 1950s and early 1960s, with some of the twelve chapters devoted to significant events in a single year and some to events over five years or more; clearly some years were more momentous than others. There are fifty black-and-white photographs, some of which are portraits of notable individuals connected with the school (such as Robin Howard, the founder of the school) and some of dancers dancing (mostly former students who have had illustrious careers as dancers and choreographers, such as Siobhan Davies); these are beautifully produced. However, the authors could have scanned and enlarged the photographs of significant documents (such as the announcement in the Dancing Times of the establishment of the school) for easier reading. As the authors state, the uniqueness of LCDS “lies in its integration with all the activities of The Place” (p. 2), for the school sits within an