TheProfessionals ? Chris May

Title: Administrative Director

Name of Organisation: Richard Alston Dance Company

Phone: 020 7387 0324

Email: [email protected]

How long in present post? Four years

What does your organisation do?
Perform the work of Richard Alston, throughout the UK and internationally

What are your responsibilities?
Aside from the choreography, pretty much everything – from taking care of Richard and the dancers through to tour booking and financial control.

Who did you used to work for and what did you do?
Director of Marketing & Corporate Affairs, Rambert Dance Company (when not servicing the Board, trying to get on with the marketing and corporate affairs); Marketing Manager, Edinburgh Festival Theatre (writing top shelf brochure copy); Marketing Director, London Contemporary Dance Theatre (marketing and learning about dance); Special Projects Manager, Island Records (most memorably, tour managing Bob Marley); Editor, Black Music & Jazz Review; saxophonist.

What do you enjoy most about your present post?
The family feeling within RADC

What do you least enjoy about your present post?
The frequency with which we are obliged to use the British rail ?system?.

What is your career ambition?
To pay our dancers what they are worth i.e. at least three times what they earn at present

Who has influenced your career to date most – and why?
Barnum & Bailey (for understatement in promotional activities)

If you could have done any job in the world what would you like to have done?
Succeeded John Coltrane in the first Miles Davis Quintet

If you had three wishes for the future of the arts, what would they be?
? More money.
? Less social work.
? More art for art?s sake.

Richard Alston Dance Company can be seen at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London from March 20-23, then touring. (Chris May will not be dancing).