Brighton Screendance Dedication to Bob Lockyer, OBE

"I want to dedicate this first screendance festival in Brighton to the amazing man Bob Lockyer. For many years he was chair of South East Dance and continued to be a strong supporter of our work, and for the last few years before he passed away, was someone I could speak to about a range of things, not least screendance issues, and he was always ready to sit down and have a conversation. When we launched 2020 Vision – our online digital programme supporting freelance artists to continue to create work and have that work seen - during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. I asked Bob if he would write a few words, and this is what he wrote for us:

"All my professional life at the BBC I’ve worked with choreographers and dancers. How lucky I was. Graham, Ashton, Macmillan, Cunningham and Robert Cohan to name a few. But also working with the Film and Video Dept of ACE, in our series “Dance for Camera”, introduced so many to the possibilities that the camera and editing could make on the dance and movement they created. Over 50 short dance videos were commissioned.

"The most important thing to remember is that making a dance film is very different to making a work for the stage. All you have is what you record through the viewfinder and then edit into your dance film. A slight turn of the head or a slight movement of a hand can be more powerful and say much more in your video than any grand jete on the stage.

"Sadly, my work can’t be seen; it’s locked away in the BBC’s film and video archive; most importantly the studio versions of Robert Cohan’s work made for his London Contemporary Dance Theatre: Cell, Waterless Method of Swimming, Nympheas and Stabat Mater. 

"These works were made well before the small video camera and now your mobile phone. They were shot in a large television studio with four or five cameras supported by a wonderful team of professionals and then edited and finally transmitted. The BBC wasn’t the only public service broadcaster making dance programmes. Sweden, Germany, France, the Dutch and many others made dance programmes and these were shown on the BBC, allowing audiences the chance to see television versions of these stage masterworks. 

"That doesn’t happen now but today choreographers are making their own dance videos; perhaps not seen by as many people as thirty and forty years ago, but they are valued works of art. I’m proud that South East Dance, of which I was chair for many years, is supporting this exciting work and I look forward to seeing it develop when South East Dance moves into its new home, The Dance Space, in Brighton." Bob Lockyer, OBE, August 2020.