DanceTabs is closing and will stop adding new articles early next month – February 2022. We’ve had a terrific 10 years covering dance and ballet from the smallest theatres to the largest, and we hope you have enjoyed reading, and importantly, seeing our coverage – we’ve always looked to do great things with pictures. All up we’ve published about 3,500 articles.
It would be nice to carry on, but age takes its toll on us all, and running a website on this scale takes much time and energy. But it’s also a time of huge change in dance and the way it is covered (as in society generally) and I increasingly feel it’s for a new generation to propel things forward and for writers, and those who love the art, to cover it in new and vibrant ways, including on social media. That and what you might call the traditional reviews we have specialised in. It continues to be a pain that on the web nobody looks to pay for anything.
Although DanceTabs is closing to new contributions, it is not closing as a website. The site will remain for at least three years and at some point go into archive that may look different but should ensure the availability of articles for far longer. Archiving a site is easy to talk about but not so easy in practice, but it’s what I want to do for DanceTabs and Balletco, the original site I started in 1996 (and was on the net until 2015), and which I’ve long wanted to do justice to.
I dearly thank all the writers and photographers who have been involved in DanceTabs – we’ve all done a cracking job of covering dance and ballet and that’s really cause for enormous celebration.
Bruce Marriott, Editor.
Very sad indeed to hear this Bruce.
Bruce:
A bit of a blow, but I take all of your points, especially about age! Between ballet.co, its successor Forum and Dance Tabs, you will have made an enormous contribution to the generic ballet and dance world in the UK. And I don’t see a successor just yet.
With all best wishes to you and Anne,
Ian.
Thank you for all the years of glory!
Dear Bruce, you have done heroic work over the years, and the website has made an important contribution to the discussion around dance. xoxox
Thank you for the huge commitment to making ballet and dance come alive online. The quality of the photo galleries and the often outstanding writing have been a joy to access, especially during these last two difficult years. Your legacy leaves a valuable asset to the dance world.
Very best wishes for the future.
Thank you for all your work – you have made a huge difference!
So sorry to see this. Hopefully we’ll see all of these bylines again, somewhere, soon.
Very sad news. Thank you for covering the dance world for so many years!
Very sad news for those of us that read and write about this slippery artform — many thanks for running such a wonderful outlet for all these years!
Thank you for all your thought provoking and important reviews. Very sorry that you’ll be closing to new reviews.
Dear Bruce,
thank you for this heroic commitment to Dance. It opened my eyes to so many aspects of the art. You also had such a fine group of writers many of whom would not have a voice.
So thank you and may you be blessed in whatever the future holds for you
Thank you for the great writing. Will miss Dance Tabs.