What Next for The Royal Academy of Dance? An Opinion Piece, by John Byrne – Part 3
The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) is a UK-based international organisation which offers training, qualifications and examinations for teachers and students of classical ballet and related forms of dance. Like all organisations of its kind, it has to keep a close eye on the bottom line.
In 1990, the Academy faced impending bankruptcy and decided to appoint a “fixer,” in the form of a CEO, to turn the organisation around. Once the financial position was stabilised, the position of CEO became a permanent one and following the very recent resignation of its last CEO, after a relatively short tenure, a search has begun for his replacement.
In this essay, John Byrne, who was there in 1990, looks at how the Academy has changed since the appointment of its first CEO, over thirty years ago, and asks whether it is now time to consider an alternative model of management.
READ PART ONE
READ PART TWO
PART THREE
In the foregoing, I have outlined some of the problems I see associated with the CEO model of management in organisations like the RAD. Some would argue that it is not so much the model that matters as much as the person who occupies the CEO position itself and how they manage both themselves and the organisation over which they preside. To a certain extent that is true, but even so, I still believe that there are better alternatives. Some would also argue that organisations of a certain size and complexity should all be managed by CEOs regardless of the nature or type of organisation under consideration. I don’t agree with that argument either. If you are the CEO of a biscuit factory, you know as much about biscuits as the workers on the factory floor and you are in the box seat to make all decisions about what goes on in the factory. Granted, you would be best advised to listen to the union rep before making your decisions but the way ahead is fairly clear and under your personal command. But biscuits and dancers and those that teach them are very different “products” and require a different type of management. If managers don’t know this particular product they must listen and consult and take advice but even then, if the final decision is up to them and they don’t have more than a superficial understanding of the matters under consideration and cannot, on that basis, evaluate whether the advice they are getting is sound or not, then why should they have the final say in the matter?
Let me illustrate this last point with a real example. I have long advocated that the Academy should develop its own training system, something which it still does not have after over a hundred years of operation, despite frequent references to the RAD “method” or the RAD “system.” On the most recent occasion when I put this forward I was told by the CEO with whom I discussed it that the Academy “did not want all of its teachers to be the same” a point of view which failed to understand that any system is used by individuals and individuals differ in terms of their creativity and in the way they apply the system to their teaching. They are also free to draw in other approaches they think will be of benefit to their students. And their work will not be “all the same.” He thought a more eclectic approach was better. How would he know?
Based on the discussion so far, it may well be time for some innovative thinking and some creative solutions to the question of how the Academy should manage itself in the best possible way for the future and whether having a CEO at the top of the organisation is the way to achieve the best outcomes. The basic and most relevant question is this: How much of the transformation of the Academy over the past 30 years has been based on the agendas of CEOs and how much of it has been based on an artistic vision for the Academy held by the Artistic Director?
Management structures of all kinds have their pros and cons and none of them are perfect or guaranteed to work. Much depends on the individuals involved, as noted earlier, but I think the structure that is most likely to work is one that allows an equal sharing of power between artists and educators on the one hand, and management on the other. The RAD is, after all, an organisation devoted to education and training in dance. Without the dance there would be no RAD. The dance comes first. The management of the dance comes after that. Surely that fact should be respected and taken into account when making decisions about how the organisation should be structured and how it should function. It is equally true that without sound fiscal management, the dance could not continue anyway. This surely indicates that there has to be a collaborative and equal sharing of responsibility between artistic and non-artistic personnel involved in the management of the organisation rather than a hierarchical one which is led by a business-oriented CEO. A sharing of power between an Artistic Director and an Executive Director means that rather than existing in an unequal arrangement where one is in a dominant position compared to the other, they are, instead, equal collaborators in a partnership. It is becoming more and more common nowadays to see arts organisations in which the management of the art form seems to be more important than the art form itself. This state of affairs is only encouraged by the CEO model. A sharing of power – call it a Co-CEO arrangement, if you like – would restore a much-needed balance to the situation.
An Executive Director and his supporting staff could oversee the operations of the whole organisation in exactly the same way that the CEO does now. It is not, by any means inevitable that a CEO will always deliver a surplus. The Academy’s recent accounts show only a little surplus of income over expenditure despite all of the attempts to diversify and grow the business. There is also no reason why an Executive Director could not produce the same financial results as a CEO does.
And the profile of the Artistic Director would be raised by placing them on the same level as the Executive Director. This seems to me to be a much better idea for the RAD. The strength and reputation of an organisation devoted to education and training in the art of dance resides much more in the position, status and performance of the Artistic Director and the Director of the Faculty of Education than in the position of the CEO who, because of the pre-eminent position he occupies at the present time, inevitably becomes the public face and voice of the organisation even when it comes to making announcements about artistic matters.
I would also strongly advocate that the Artistic staffing at the Academy be increased in the same way that the administrative staff has been increased. No Artistic Director has the full range of knowledge and skills required for the multifaceted AD’s position at the RAD, and the creation of a new position of Assistant or Associate to the Artistic Director would not only assist in the considerable workload of the AD, it would also add a complementary set of skills to the artistic leadership if the appointment was appropriately made. If the person appointed to that position has a strong pedagogical background, so much the better. If not, then the additional appointment of a pedagogical expert should also be made and given the priority task, in company with a co-opted panel, of devising a training system for teachers, the need for which was discussed earlier. The Foundations books, which were produced some years ago and which I think were regarded as providing some sort of system, are little more than descriptions of how to perform steps. Rather than developing a training system, the Academy has largely relied on its syllabi to do the training for them. The problem with that approach is that typically there is a change of syllabi every 20 years and what is produced depends very much on the priorities of the Artistic Director in place at the time. There is very little underlying continuity. The present vocational syllabi were not constructed on a training model at all, a fundamental misjudgement considering that the majority of teachers use the syllabi for training purposes and have no alternative training system at present to back them up. It is absolutely essential to have any future renewal of syllabi led by a pedagogical expert in collaboration with the AD. It is a highly specialised job needing the kind of specific training and expertise which ADs don’t commonly possess.
The RAD has done much to be proud of in the world of dance education and training since it was founded in 1920 in the UK before expanding its operations throughout the world. It has done a great deal of good over an extended period of time. Much of its present reputation was established in the years before the first CEO came along. The original aim of the organisation – and it was embodied in a singular and clear vision – was to improve the standard of classical ballet teaching. This work continues albeit with a more academic approach via the Faculty of Education (FOE), established in 1999, and in the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses a certain number of which are mandatory for teachers each year if they wish to keep their status as Registered teachers. Recently these CPD courses have included more content directly related to the development of teaching skills rather than excessive navel gazing on the Academy’s various syllabi which was certainly the case in the past. Before the FOE and the CPD course were established, the Academy placed a lot of reliance on its syllabi and examination system to bring about improvements in the standard, a vain hope nowadays given that the syllabi lack a strong underlying training methodology and the examination system itself is not demanding in terms of the standards it requires. There is certainly work to be done to improve the Academy’s work in those core areas.
There is, for example, a great need for the development of a simple yet exacting syllabus devoted to acquiring the basic fundamentals of classical ballet technique; the development of a conditioning programme for all levels of students to run alongside their examinations syllabus, and, after a RAD training system is finally developed, the Academy could then move on to the ultimate in good teaching practice which is based, not on a set syllabus, which has significant limitations, but on work that teachers have created themselves for their students based on the Academy’s system. I am sure that these initiatives would be far more productive and unifying than the kind of tangential development we have seen in recent years much of which seems to be based on increasing participation and raising income. They would also place the Artistic team at the centre of the Academy’s operations, lift the credibility of the Academy, and allow it, once again, to make the best and most valuable contribution to education and training in classical ballet. I am not suggesting that the organisation should limit itself to ballet only, but it should definitely get that right before giving considerations to developing other genres.
In conclusion, and to summarise the main points made in this essay: I believe that in order to move forward the Academy should turn its attention to an improvement in the core activities which established its reputation in the first place: The Teaching and Assessment of Classical Ballet. There is much work to be done in those two areas as I have outlined earlier. The CEO model has dominated the management of the Academy and the direction it has taken; it has placed too much emphasis on business development and produced too much diversification in the Academy’s activities. The Academy’s identity has been changed but exactly what does it stand for nowadays, and where is it heading? The CEO’s position should be replaced by an Executive Director and an Artistic Director in a balanced and co-operative partnership based on a mutual understanding of the other’s role and how the two can work most productively together. This, I firmly believe, would lead to better outcomes than the ones we have witnessed in recent years.
John Byrne is a graduate of the University of Sydney (BA), the University of Westminster,(Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Administration) and the Professional Dancer’s Teaching Diploma, ARAD (RAD London) He worked at RAD headquarters in London from 1990 – 1994, for most of that time as Artistic Director and Chair of the Examining Board. He has had an extensive international career in teaching and examining classical ballet and is regarded as an elder of the classical dance community in Australia and one of its leading teachers and pedagogues.
In 1997 he established and was the founding director for 8 years of the Redlands Ballet and Dance Academy in Sydney now in its 28th year and under the direction of former Royal Ballet dancer, Gilly Revie.
He has created ballet syllabi for the RAD and for Classical Dance Australia, which he established in 2015. He has also written occasional dance criticism, feature articles and commentary on dance for many years.
