Declining ballet audiences? Fact or fiction.

[bart]

In a current thread about the NYCB opening (without a Balanchine ballet), oberon describes a norm of empty seats at ballet/opera/symphony performances in New York City. Even the Balanchine Nutcracker. The NYCB has sent its regular supporters an email offering opening night tickets at deep discounts.

This got me thinking about reviews I've read in Ballet Talk about the ABT tours -- even Kirov and Bolshoi -- which contain occasional and (to me) quite surprising references to swathes of empty seats at certain perfomances.

Do you agree that ballet attendance is declining in your area? If so, what (in your opinion) are the reasons? What should be done about it?

[Helene]

When I was in Phoenix last weekend acting Managing Director Kevin Myers announced before a couple of performances that both subscription sales and single ticket sales had increased to record numbers. Ballet Arizona moved back into Symphony Hall, where the acoustics were renovated last year, after a year of performing in the smaller Orpheum Theatre a few blocks away. The last performance on Sunday afternoon started 15-20 minutes late to accommodate same-day single ticket buyers, who formed a line which snaked around the block.

Pacific Northwest Ballet saw a similar rise after the move back into McCaw Hall, but I'm not sure if that meant matching or surpassing the sales figures before the dive during the year and half in Mercer Arena. (The Opera House lost a few hundred seats in the transformation to McCaw Hall.) In my opinion, there were a few too many empty seats for the current Past, Present, Future program, although the audiences last Friday and last night were very vocal and enthusiastic.

With the exception of The Nutcracker Ballet Arizona performs 4-5 performances per program (Thursday or Friday through Sunday), while PNB performs eight performances over two weekends. Like any company that plays one program at a time, which covers most North American companies except NYCB, ABT (at least the Fall season), and San Francisco Ballet -- SFB alternates between two ballets over several weekends -- attendance is dependent on how any given program "takes." While Ballet Arizona has scheduling issues that would limit the number of performances -- it plays in the same venue as the Symphony and the Opera -- it's also important for companies to know what market saturation is in their city.

Ballet Arizona was fortunate to get a rave review for Romeo and Juliet, which not only was well-deserved, but which lauded the characteristics that a general audience could appreciate and recognize when they attended.

[bart]

The last performance on Sunday afternoon started 15-20 minutes late to accommodate same-day single ticket buyers, who formed a line which snaked around the block.

Very encouraging -- if not astonishing. Congratulations to this company.

My impression is that ballet attendance is expanding ever so slightly in south Florida, at least over the past 4 seasons.

Miami City Ballet has a program schedule not unlike San Francisco's: 3 weekends, but spread out over Miami (3 performances of each), Fort Lauderdale (4) and West Palm Beach (5). They also appear regularly in Naples. Nutcrackers are performed in all locations as well, though in West Palm they compete with the perennially popular Ballet Florida version.

In West Palm (a 2000+-seat house) MCB attendance seems good and steady, but there are always scattered empty seats around the house, especially far up and to the back. The most expensive seats here tend to sell out first. One problem they face is the relative lack of visibility and local involvement of the company's school, dancers, and personnel outside of Miami, making it appear -- in West Palm at least -- that they are a touring company rather than a resident company. I'm told, however, that the rich Palm Beach donor base contributes more than the Miami community.

Ballet Florida sounds more like Ballet Arizona: 4 programs of 3-4 performances each. Two are in the 2000+ Kravis, including Romeo and Juliet this year; and two are in a house that has about 600 seats. And 9 Nutcrackers. They do pretty well in both venues, though the "mixed bill" at the larger Kravis is a hard sell, with more than usual empty seats. Like Arizona, they're doing R&J this year, which did very well last time. I've noticed more ticket discounting this year than before, but that's just an impression.

The annual touring Russian event (this year, Swan Lake from St. Petersburg) tends to be a near sell-out. The touring modern series (companies like Hubbard Street, Alonso King, philobolus) at a mid-size house tends to sell out two performances each, or come close to that.

In other words, we're far from Indianapolis (or even Oakland) down here. But the struggle to attract paying audiences continues. And the possibility of failure next time or down the line must make company directors lose sleep occasionally.

[Kate B]

I think it depends on the company, obviously, but over all, you could be right.

Perhaps it is time the marketing departments of dance companies stopped employing insiders who know a lot about dance but not much about audiences, and started taking on people with wider professional experience.

[bart]

Perhaps it is time the marketing departments of dance companies stopped employing insiders who know a lot about dance but not much about audiences, and started taking on people with wider professional experience.

An excellent idea. I've talked to marketing people who "like" ballet and maybe did it when they were 12, but had no active involvement until they sent in the job application. And they do tend to come and go.

[Kate B]

Yes, marketing jobs in dance are very poorly paid... and yet, impossible to get apparently unless you have dance credentials other than simply 'liking' it.

[ami1436]

Actually, I can think of at least one big company that uses a major advertising firm. Obviously though, this is not the case for most companies.

[Kate B]

I know, I once worked for that ad agency. An interesting account to work on, and lots of free tickets. Sadly I wasn't in that team...

I am more referring to the in-house marketing departments rather than the agencies they employ, where there is still a lot of 'insiderism'.

[ami1436]

Kate_B, I agree with you regarding that insiderism... we'll have to swap notes! ;)

[Kate B]

That would be fun. Some time I'll manage to get to a BA-get together.

[YouOverThere]

Perhaps it is time the marketing departments of dance companies stopped employing insiders who know a lot about dance but not much about audiences, and started taking on people with wider professional experience.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It seems that in many arts organizations jobs go to the spouses of high-ranking administrators or board memebers.

[Helene]

It seems that in many arts organizations jobs go to the spouses of high-ranking administrators or board memebers.

But is it the chicken or the egg? Do they get the jobs because they are already married, or do they meet "on the job" and marry? (Like Mazzo met her husband, who was a board member when she was a dancer.) And if two administrators are already married, did they meet in another organization, with both of them having serious credentials?

[carbro]

It seems that in many arts organizations jobs go to the spouses of high-ranking administrators or board memebers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Since arts organizations tend to pay low salaries compared to other not-for-profit organizations (not to mention the profit-making sector :rolleyes: ), the pool of applicants for these jobs is pretty much limited to those who have an abiding passion for the arts, or for the particular art.

[Mel Johnson]

Two organizations I help support in small ways are the Metropolitans. The Museum and the Opera. The thing that makes these two similar is their relentless pursuit of the audience and the $$$. The Museum is more interested in having you show up, but the Opera won't leave you alone until it gets some money from you! It's been demonstrated that the museum-goer will actually contribute more including ticket, trips to the cafeteria, sales at the Museum Gift Shop, and so on, than the opera-goer, who usually attends, but is less likely to spend on subsidiary fund-raising ventures. I believe that ballet audiences are different, and will buy loads of tchatchkes at the "Company Boutiques" and such like. But the main operative word, I think, is "relentless". Both Mets really go after the customer!

They are nearly macabre in their pursuit of both ticket sale and contribution. The Museum writes some of its contributors, "Have you remembered us in your will? If not, why not consider it? If you, on the other hand, have - how old are you? How ya been feeling lately?"

If ballet companies were to follow these leads, I wonder if there would be a positive effect on both attendance and other revenue?

[Quiggin]

Opera generally seems to have attracted a younger and smart audience--much more so than ballet has--in the last 10 years. In the fifties and sixties all the literary and artworldly crowd made regular pilgramages to see Balanchine, and to Cunningham later on, but I doubt in any of the ArtForum crowd know much about Mr. B, despite his Russian constructivist background.

Part of the opera thing is that there is so much serious opera criticism being published these days--76,600 hits on Amazon, as oposed to 605 for "dance criticism" and 52 for "ballet criticism." We all turn again and again to Denby and Garis and the wonderful but idiosyncratic Arlene Croce, and not much else. It's too bad that Susan Sontag, who was a NYCB fan, didn't write about ballet, or Roland Barthes (who writes so well on the sensuality of Cy Twombly--he might have commented on Balanchine scribbling or writing with the ballerina's foot, such as that which occurs in the arc-enscribing sequence in Liebeslieder).

Opera is the voice, and people identify their being with singing more than with dancing (singing--not dancing--in the shower). It's difficult in criticism finding a natural point of identity for audiences within ballet as the voice is in opera. Though Joan Acocella did get close to something interesting in her Balanchine-and-the-crouch lecture at UC Berkeley earlier this year.

[JaneD]

[Yes, marketing jobs in dance are very poorly paid... and yet, impossible to get apparently unless you have dance credentials other than simply 'liking' it.]

Quite a few years ago, Friends of ENB were asked to volunteer to run a stand at the Coliseum over the Christmas period. I clearly recall spending one entire interval trying to persude a Royal Ballet dancer to join Friends on English National Ballet. I didn't succeed, but it was fun.

Too often, large companies seem so interested in the big, corporate money that they quite forget individual audience members and enthusiasts. Unfortunately, they also know (in London, at least), that they can sell seats at almost any price as "corporate entertaining". Audiences may not be shrinking here, but I would say that knowledgable audiences are.

Jane