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Art & Values


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Thanks to dirac for this link from Backstage.

A pertinent quote -

Taking control of your message and becoming your own advocate was the clarion call of Ben Cameron, executive director of Theatre Communications Group. To an audibly appreciative audience of weary attendees on the final day of the convention, Cameron emphasized the need for arts organizations to clearly identify their values. His talk was as much a reality check for arts leaders as a call to political action.

"Value precedes quality," he said, explaining that arts organizations need to directly communicate what they deliver in terms of value, not just proclaim that they present quality work.

"What's the value you offer through the work you do?" he asked. "That's what you need to be communicating. Distinguish your values from your mission statement and clarify how your community will be damaged if [your organization] ceases to exist."

I think there's a lot of food for thought in the article. As someone who did a fair amount of fundraising, I didn't find it uplifting. I admit to finding it discouraging - it smacks to me of the art I've seen that seemed to be made primarily because it was fundable. Values and issues are very important things, and valuable for artists and art. But the art that I've loved most would probably not have been made if everything came down to values, issues - and though Cameron uses the word community, I'll use this word - constituency. Art is about expression first. Values are a secondary by-product.

Any thoughts?

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Reading the entire article, I realized that "values" and "issues" are indeed treated as versions of pretty much the same thing. Ballet Austin's example is its Light Project, subtitled Holocaust and Humanity, which seems worthwhile, uplifting, and rather (to say the least) uncontroversial.

There's plenty of room for that in the arts. However, dangers include (a) didacticism and preachiness, (b) feel-good and/or mean-spirited presentations of OUR values as opposed to those other people's values, and © alienating people who don't share or identify with the set of values you've chosen. All in all, it can be a slippery slope.

Living in a state (Florida) which could not be more divided as to the fundamental values of its residents -- and where one group's priorities are often despised and villified by other groups -- I guess I'm more wary of this course of action than inspired by it. :)

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For me, I'm worried less about offense than that I just don't think it makes very good art. Having something you need to talk about often does, but how often do we have the performance, and the attendant workshops, and the discussion sessions, and the outreach and the grant proposals . . .

It really does make me nostalgic for the days when NYCB's project descriptions to the NEA was "a new ballet by Mr. Balanchine or Mr. Robbins".

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Leigh, I entirely agree with your last sentence. Those of us who grew up with Balanchine (especially in the City Center days) had a wonderful education in these values.

But, if the Americans for the Arts convention is any indicator, we've moved -- even the administrators of the arts community -- far from this ideal. "Value precedes quality," is the dictum from Ben Cameron, executive director of Theatre Communications Group." The article goes on: "He also reminded the crowd that in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war on terror, it is more important than ever that arts organizations make themselves relevant to the political concerns of their audience."

A lot of pretty fishy things have been justified as a response to Sept. 11 -- but this is a new one for me. Is he actually suggestion that the arts community can or should build up sympathy and support by joining the war on terror? Or what? It SEEMS so, since he goes on to say " You have to help build a public consciousness of important issues of today. That's what your citizenship [as arts leaders] is about." This is quite extreme. And, in my opinion, quite scary when it comes from an arts administrator and not from a politician's podium or a cable talk show.

Edited by bart
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Is he actually suggestion that the arts community can or should build up sympathy and support by joining the war on terror?  Or what? 

If you asked me to guess his intentions, I'd bet he's as much asking artists to encourage discussion (and dissent) about the role of the government as support it.

The idea of the artist as a public citizen (of whatever opinions) is a healthy one. High and classical art gets marooned when the artists cut themselves off from the culture at large. But I'm really bothered by the "value precedes quality" dictum, more than anything else.

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Hmmm, as a Brit performing arts academic, this is a fascinating conversation on which to eavesdrop! The idea of the artist as someone who offers an (oppositional) commentary on events is a fairly conventional one here, with the strong British tradition of politically engaged art (often supported, of course, by state subsidy!). But in the US, isn't this an increasingly perilous undertaking? I'm thinking of the (to us over here) terrible course of events suffered by Steve Kurtz, whose performance art work has been in a difficult encounter with US Homeland security issues: Critical Art Ensemble. I know plenty of Americans are shocked by these events as well, and in many ways, it's you guys who have the real battles between art and expression and repressive state measures now! Perhaps UK artists have reached a rather complacent accommodation with state policies ...

Kate

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I'm a relative newcomer to ballet. While I love the classics (Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire, La Fille Mal Gardee, The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, etc.), understanding and appreciating them has taken time and considerable self-education on my part. In talking with other audience members, I have been repeatedly struck by how little many of them know about the ballets they attend and how little they actually understand about what they've seen. In our fast paced word, increasingly, people don't read and don't have the time to invest in learning about the art form. I think one of the things we often forget when we see one of the classics, is just how "main stream" they were in terms of the popular culture in which they first appeared. I think that companies that try to exist on a steady diet of only the classics are doomed to failure. Modern audiences deserve ballets that are relevant to their own time. Those ballets can employ classical technique, but they need to be built on modern themes that resonant with today's audiences. No company will remain successful if it chooses to ignore its audience. A company can claim to be a "world class company" until the cows come home, but if it fails to communicate with and touch its audience, then it doesn't matter how technically superior the dancers are.

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Welsh Canary, you raise some interesting points. From some of your previous posts, I believe that we are from the same state. My question to you is how can we as enjoyers of all the arts convince the community that arts are an important part of life? Right now in my city the mayor is more interested in building a new football stadium for a bunch of millionare players and owner who has NO LOYALTY to the community beyond getting his new stadium. Although he didn't come out and specifically said so I think the implication was, build me a stadium or my team will leave. The mayor has also convinced most of the counties surrounding the city to vote in a 1% food and beverage tax to support the stadium (based on his reasoning that it is good for the entire area). It doesn't matter that anyone going to the football games will not spend the night in a hotel 20 miles out of town, or probably even eat there, the commissionars passed the tax and as such are effectively penalizing the local people. One county (not mine) had the guts to stand up to the mayor and didn't vote in the tax. It also appears that in this city that sports rule, never mind that the public school system has major problems, they have major sewage leaks into the river during heavy rains, the public transportation system is literally non-existent, the police department is underfunded, library underfunded, I could go on forever, but we will HAVE A NEW STADIUM!!!

I believe it was Lenin who said that religion was the opiate of the masses, but I feel that we could change that in this area to say that sports are the peoples opiate. Just give them a winning team and anything goes.

Another point that you raised is the repetoire of dance companies. If the classic ballets were relevant in their early days then how could we make them relevant to people today? How can we educate people today to see that dance is a beautiful art and that the dancers while artists are also performing a very physically demanding job? In my local school system my son's elementary took the 4th graders to the symphony and in the 6th grade they go to the opera, in my oldest son's high school they went to the local theater company to see a play and I know that that company puts on many daytime perfomances of The Christmas Carol for school groups. Nowhere in the curriculum have I seen mention of a trip to the ballet. I know that the local company does outreach perfomances, but I think that they are just to the inner city schools (correct me if I'm wrong) and not to the schools outside the main area of the city. If the symphony, opera and theater company can reach all of these groups then why are ballet companies having a hard time reaching the same groups? Is it something that is just in our area or is it widespread? Is ballet something that people just don't understand, while going to the symphony or a play is easier to understand? You also mention ballets that are relevant to our times. Last year our local company performed Dracula. I don't know if it made money, but my sons sure enjoyed it. I don't know what other modern ballets are out there for companies to perform. I would like to see some Balanchine or Tudor but I don't know if there are copyright issues with those ballets. One of the local modern dance companies just got done with a performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was wonderful, the dancers all looked like they were having a good time on stage, they came out afterwards and mingled with the audience and both of my sons once again enjoyed it. In fact the oldest one went back to see it a second time.

Another thing that might be causing some lack of attendance is now most places have you buy your tickets through a ticketing service. The company can advertise $15.00 tickets, but by the time you go through the ticket service they end up costing $5-10 more. If someone is stretching the budget to spend $15, then adding a fee on to the price of the ticket may make them say just forget it. I for one am also fairly new to the ballet, but I have become an avid fan. I love going to the shows, seeing the dancers, trying to pick out my favorites in the corps, etc., but I am also at a point in my life where I can afford some of the luxuries of going to the theater , etc. But many people are just trying to make ends meet and even if the ballet company performs something that is more modern, they just don't have the extra money to go to a performance. However, I do hope that the local company will be around for a long time. I think it would be a great loss to our city, if they were to ever leave.

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Wow, lthomass -- that was a great post covering a number of issues.

I agree with you on the stadium issue, but it's hard in Seattle to be too bitter, because at in the same period where a baseball stadium (where the vote against was overridden by the county*) and a football stadium (to subsidize the team of multi-billionnaire Paul Allen, who did threaten to move the Seahawks back to California*), we've also seen a new Symphony Hall, a renovated opera house, and are in the process of building a new extension to the Seattle Art Museum.

*Bitter, but not too bitter.

You mentioned that the symphony, opera, and theatre in your area have outreach programs, but dance doesn't. In general, outside of major dance regions, dance companies tend to have less money than symphony and opera companies. Outreach programs tend to be run by the more established companies or through smaller groups organized by members of major companies in their "spare" time. Although there are some companies that have or had made a "niche" in outreach: Balletfore, the predecessor of New York Theatre Ballet, performed a lot in schools and for senior citizens, in addition to touring and an annual performance in NYC.

When I was growing up, and I suspect this may still be true, there was an assumption that "boys don't like ballet." Because of this thinking, I missed Baryshnikov's debut with ABT in Giselle: the directors of the summer program I was attending decided, after much soul-searching (because they really wanted to go to the ballet), that boys in the program would prefer the Mostly Mozart Festival concert and would hate the ballet. (Hearing the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 has since been a bittersweet experience.)

About ticketing services, it's another issue for smaller companies: they can't afford online computer systems of their own or full box office staffs to process phone orders. (The ones that do often charge around $4 per order for processing.) Just yesterday, I responded to a "15% off " presale for the Moscow Ballet performance of Swan Lake in Portland this Fall. The Ticketmonster "convenience charge" per ticket for the $63 seats was over $9. (I didn't get far enough to find out what the per order additional charge was. And, they want you to pay $2.50 to print them out on your computer.) The charge per ticket for the $36 tickets was either $5+ or $6+. Add parking, and a ballet outing for a family of four in the "cheap seats" costs about $180. If I were young and hadn't already fallen in love with ballet and opera, and had a small budget for entertainment, I'd probably see four movies instead of a ballet.

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I guess part of my lengthy (ha, ha) note was unclear. The local ballet company does do outreach performances. I know that they are to the inner city schools, but my question to Welsh Canary was if he/she knew if they went to the schools outside of the city. I'm sorry if that was not clear. Glad (in a sad sort of way) to see that we are not the only city being held for hostage by the team owners. I did forget to say though that our Art Museum and Museum of Indian/Western history just had major upgrades and they are beautiful. We also now have an outdoor arts park with large sculptures, handicapped accessible, etc. From the article in the paper it looked interesting. I'll have to make a trip there someday, the best part is it is FREE!!

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