Why I Quit Professional Dance

[Ray]

Leigh and others raise another point--there is definitely a club mentality, espeically among presenters, about what's "hot" (how about what's good or what's interesting or what's good for a company, etc.?). And--my *own* personal observation--boards of directors in the provinces not only prefer to hire men but they really salivate over married men (notice that I didn't say straight, although more than a few have banked on that assumption) especially if they are married to a dancer. That PR story got real tiresome to hear after the 100th time!

[Solor]

How true you are Ray! Men are better treated than woman.....its kind of like the civil rights movement.....African-Americans were treated poorly and Caucasians were not, now it seems that the African-Americans are given more special treatment, especially in entertainment and acedemics. Go figure......I think it sucks that women are treated with less attention (or so it seems), but to put it bluntly there are LOTS of them, and they are all good. But everybody today is fabulous....there's nothing unique about dance anymore.....Im sure someone is gonna tell me otherwise, but I'm for real, it's all a bunch of clones who are all perfect. It's cool though I guess, ballet dancing has evolved as far as it will ever go technically.

As far as modern choreographers go, I think they are all pretty much not all that great. Come on, we live in the 21st century - all ideas have been thought of already! I rarely see anything special anymore. I know someone will tell me otherwise but it's true!

[Leigh Witchel]

I'm speaking as a Moderator at this moment.

I was going to pull and/or edit the above post's comments about Reverse Discrimination, but on reflection, I'm going to let it stand.

That being said, Ballet Alert is a discussion forum about ballet. If people have something to say about the topic of Reverse Discrimination as it relates to ballet, by all means respond and let's discuss the issue. If we start going way off topic, or if the discussion starts getting counterproductive, I'll step in and close the thread.

[Mel Johnson]

Leaving the issue of reverse discrimination quite aside for the moment, I'd ask that we remember the US Senator who, around 1906, recommended that the US Patent Office be closed, as everything had already been invented!;)

[Ray]

Wow--talk about the law of *unintended* consequences...thanks Leigh for being diplomatic where I might not have.

I'd like to keep coming back to the problem of not performing enough in relation to the development of ballet as an active performing art. I think it's a problem for choreographers too--every ballet becomes so important that there's no room for failure, for the *process* of developing a body of work. (Perhaps for some choreographers work in the studio is enough?) I can't help but think that Balanchine's work is as developed as it is in part because he had the opportunity to choreograph a lot on bodies that danced a lot.

I suppose too there's a danger of performing too much; around this time of year, we dancers used to say "we're not in shape, we're doing the Nutcracker!"

[Leigh Witchel]

I agree that lack of performances is a huge artistic issue for regional companies. Do you see any possible solutions?

[citibob]

We are lucky in that we have our own performance space. That dramatically lowers the cost of producing a show, allowing us to perform the same show more times in a run. This is a smaller space than what one can typically rent in a theater.

[Ray]

While more money is the obvious answer, I think there also needs to be a recognition of the problem from the management from a development point of view beyond its effect on box office revenue. (I wonder too if board members have a "recital" model in mind, i.e., the company gears up all season or all year for a single weekend of perfs.) Sometimes I felt in my experience that it was actually cheaper for a company *not* to perform--a really discouraging and shortsighted way for a company to make up for losses.

[Alexandra]

I trink the "recital" mentality may be part of the problem -- people tend to build on what is already there, not start from scratch, and the "civic ballet" model was to have something at Christmas and something in the spring. Then a fall program is added. By the time you get to "regional" level, there's usually 2 or 3 spring programs.

As I remember it, one of the first things Tomasson did when he took over SFB was to break that model and have a continuous season, although it's still broken down into programs -- Program I, Program II, etc, and not a completely integrated repertory (meaning you might see New Ballet on an All New program one night, and snuggled in between Great Classic and Last Year's Best New Work the next).

So part of it is mindset, but also, that's not a bad model for growth, and smaller companies don't have the audience to sustain an 8, 10, 12 week season.

What's bad about the Program model, to me, especially coupled wiith Modern Marketing 101, is that it's fragmenting the audience. It assumes that there is Type A, who will only see "the classics" and is 80 years old, and Type B, who will only see New Work and is 20 years old. And then there's Mother's Day, and Valentine's Day, and Hallowe'en -- all things that are "easy" to market using non-arts models. The Diaghlev model was more mixed. One old favorite, one avant-garde piece, and a leave 'em clapping or laughing ballet . The new was mixed in with the old, which made new works much more easy for audiences to accept -- accessible in the most neutral sense of the term.

As for how to solve it -- what I wrote above, the Dance the Same Program at Four Different Places model can be done until audiences can be developed that will tolerate longer seasons.

But is this realistic? Will this ever happen in America? How many cities have a significant population of arts consumers? As they would say in Modern Marketing 101?

[Leigh Witchel]

The smaller (also often more rudimentary) performance venue model is being used many places to add performances and get new work seen. I saw from its website Richmond Ballet moved one of its season performances to a converted space in its studio building. Louisville does the Choreographer's Showcase as a studio perfprmance (I should also mention it's a production by the dancers under the aegis of the company). There are also the "brown-bag" performances many companies are doing. It isn't preferable to a full production, but it's preferable to no production.

[Mel Johnson]

Having a small theater to perform in sometimes has its benefits, if you rent it, it's less expensive, and you can always say, we sold out the house every night! That was the way with "The Fantasticks" at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. Seventy-five seats. I've worked at wonderful theaters which had perfect stages with great machinery, but only seats that could be numbered in the hundreds.