Image: London Contemporary Dance School, Hugo Glendinning 

The UK’s leading dance schools have hit back at criticism over their training methods from prominent dance companies.

The Akram Khan Company, DV8 Physical Theatre and Hofesh Shechter Company, all released a statement last month, expressing concern about the standard of training and of UK dancers.

But now Veronica Lewis, Principle of the London Contemporary Dance School, Anthony Bowne, the Principle of Trinity Laban, and Janet Smith, Principle of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, have responded to the criticism.

In a joint statement they said: “It is disappointing that three prominent UK choreographers feel that UK dance schools are failing students especially as graduates from London Contemporary Dance School, Trinity Laban and NSCD have danced with all their companies.

“Our aim is to produce dance-artists who can have successful careers in dance and who thrive upon the creativity, dynamism and opportunities our Institutions offer.

“We all provide high level training through our Centres for Advanced Training in pre-vocational dance, and will continue to work with the profession to increase access to this training right across the UK.”

Farooq Chaudhry, one of the producers at the Akram Khan Company, resigned from his post at Dance UK following the statement against the schools.

Speaking to A Younger Theatre, Mr Chaudhry said: “The standard of our dancers and our leading teaching standards is a conversation that has been talked about for many years.

“As employers we are noticing that these dancers do not seem sufficient. All we want to do is find a way to work this out.

“We are all ex dancers. We can see there is a lack of vigour and strength in the body. We really wanted to talk to the school to see what they are doing.

“There is a lack of real life changing critical feedback. It is a bit softly-softly.”

In the statement, the Akram Khan Company say that since 2000 they have employed 51 dancers, but only four were trained in the UK.

But the schools hit back, saying that they have found that nearly 80% of their leavers in 2012/13 were working in dance or further study after 6 months.