Sometimes the world coaxes you gently towards change. Sometimes it gives you a shove. During the rude shove of this pandemic time, what had been gradual changes – working from home more often, moving things online – became unavoidable. Life dragged us along, and we had to adjust. In the past year, I’ve Zoomed on the regular and seen more dance on my phone than I have on stage. I’ve seen less of my friends, but more of my cats. As life, at least in the UK, shuffles out of lockdown, many changes are here to stay (especially the cats).

Sometimes the world coaxes you gently towards change. Sometimes it gives you a shove. During the rude shove of this pandemic time, what had been gradual changes – working from home more often, moving things online – became unavoidable. Life dragged us along, and we had to adjust. In the past year, I’ve Zoomed on the regular and seen more dance on my phone than I have on stage. I’ve seen less of my friends, but more of my cats. As life, at least in the UK, shuffles out of lockdown, many changes are here to stay (especially the cats).

It’s the same with dance in general, and Dance Gazette in particular. Before the pandemic, the dance industry was slowly engaging in conversations around safeguarding, representation and diversity. Then 2020 forced everyone off stage and into their heads to consider the kind of industry they wanted to see on their return. In this issue of Dance Gazette, we ask what meaningful change looks like – especially for young dancers just entering the profession, and for everyone hoping for more sustainable, environmentally conscious ways of working.

And Dance Gazette changes too. After 91 years as the printed voice of the Royal Academy of Dance, it re-emerges as a digital-only magazine. Much is the same. We still want to bring you inspiring and urgent stories, exploring how the RAD impacts upon the world and how the world affects us all. We’ll still work with incisive and imaginative writers, photographers and illustrators. But we’ll also try to bring you more. More multimedia content, so that we don’t only write about movement, we capture it too. More ways to bring our stories to life, and for you to respond to them. And more sheer pleasure – like the swoonsome animated cover Kingsley Nebechi created for our launch issue. Life changes, even when we’d rather it didn’t – because change is how we know we’re alive.

David Jays
Editor