citibob

Balanchine's choreography was affected by the massive size of the Lincoln Center stage. The precursor of England's Royal Ballet, I believe, started out on an 18'x18' stage.

I've seen that glut of buying in for-profit companies as well. There's this sense that if you don't use up the money, the Feds will figure out how to use it for you.

OK, I'll write that up in a grant proposal. Opening at Lincoln Center, Citibob's new choreography. Bad choreography. It will really help the dancers learn. After all, they never get this valuable experience with Balanchine. I'm sure my proposal for bad choreography will be well received by the various funding agencies. The audience should like it too; after all, then they can see their favorite dancers in a bad light!

If the critics are any indication, then the new works I regularly dance are of much higher quality than that typical of the Diamond Project. And it's done at a fraction of the budget. And I don't even dance for a famous company like NYCB. For that reason, I struggle to find the rationale in giving some of the world's best dancers lessons in bad choreography. Wouldn't it be much better for the dancers (and of course the audience as well) if they worked with better choreographers?

Griskovic's "Ballet 101" book discusses this issue.

Yea, isn't that one of the practices that Enron is being nailed for?

I've seen Ailey Company, in which they kept doing the end of Revealations as an encore about 5 times! Revealations makes a deep connection with the black church experience. I've found that audience react as if they're in church.

Our ticket prices are dramatically lower than typical today for a large ballet company. They are much closer to, say, the prices charged at the Joyce Theatre. It seems paradoxical to me, the larger the theatre, the more you pay per ticket. The lower ticket prices is certainly a factor in bringing in a younger audience. How many families of four with parents in their mid-30's can afford a night out to the ballet at $95/ticket (that's $380 total)! Anyway, costs are controlled across the board. We own the space, so production costs are dramatically lower. Costuming costs MUCH less than $80K. Only 16 dancers are involved in the repertory shows (about 24 for Nutcracker). Scenery is minimal (somewhat more elaborate for Nutcracker). And, sorry to say, we're not paid like unionized dancers either. It works for what we do, but I don't think anyone would want to see a Giselle or Swan Lake done that way. It's more in line with the production stuff you see for modern dance.

My company brings in a younger audience for all its shows. And we do NOT do it by pandering to the pop culture or by trying to be "cool".

Most of the clothing we wear is made overseas in factories that pay $1-$2 per day. Obviously, if you pay $10/hr for local labor, the costume will cost a lot more. Since ballet is a money-losing business in which losses are covered by contributions, it stands to reason that big companies lose more money than small companies.

This thread was titled "is ballet really unprofitable". This is, I might point out, one reason why.

What about a two-tiered approach? Produce new choreography on a smaller scale in a smaller venue. If it seems to work out well, then bring it to the full Lincoln Center stage. If not, then it's not too much of a loss that thousands in the audience never got to see it. That's all I'm suggesting. It seems quite doable to me.

Back in the old days, New Haven was a testing ground for Broadway shows. A show wouldn't be produced on Broadway untill it had proven its potential for success in New Haven. Contrast that to the Diamond Project, which in this analogy would be like putting your latest and greatest shows up on Broadway without any testing beforehand.

Recent college grads have no professional experience. Top dancers making $90K probably have at least a decade, most of them.

Leigh, what is the difference between cash flow and revenue? Clearly, NO organization can survive for too long with negative cash flow. By "run the company", I meant "have the ultimate say". Boards do things like hire and fire management. Shareholders in a for-profit company (analogous to non-profit boards) elect board members and vote on the most important issues. In neither case do the "ultimate owners" run the company directly.

You must be careful when talking about the profitability of an endeavor. A company (of any industry) is said to be profitable if its revenues are greater than its expenses. Expenses include employee salaries. Any profits go to the people who own the company --- also known as shareholders. Shareholders ultimately run the company because they are the ones who own it. Ballet companies typically exist as a non-profit corporation. There are no shareholders in the traditional sense because normal shareholders expect to see a profit on their investment. If I give $$ to a nonprofit, I can expect to NEVER see a return on that "investment"; hence, it is a donation, not a purchase of stock. Large donors have a shot at being on the board of directors. The board ultimately runs the company. That makes sense; they're the ones funding it. Practically all ballet companies, including NYCB, are nonprofit. They certainly might pay high salaries to their employees; and the board of directors at some level feels that is justified because it is the board's $$ on the line. But in the end of the day, ballet companies spend more money than they bring in. That shortfall is covered by continual donations. In the for-profit world, this would be equivalent to a company that continuously seeks new venture capital but never pays dividends. Those companies lasted only a few years in the dot-com boom. To last longer than a dot-com, a ballet company must secure continued new donations.

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.

I think all ballet companies lose money. NYCB in its program states that only 70% of operating expenses are covered by ticket sales.

We get the "better if imported" syndrome in Boston as well. Recently panel was held by the Fleet Celebrity Series; panelists included dance experts. Not even one of them was from Boston.

There's always the suspicion that the audience declares as stars the people in the most visible roles. I'm able to test that by comparing Nutcracker reviews from year to year. You already know who's going to be mentioned beforehand based on press night casting. However, there is some variation. A particularly strong dancer in one of the "mentionable" roles will often receive positive mention, while a weak dancer (or one who couldn't care less) in one of those roles will be ignored (or sometimes even receive a bad review). In the repertory seasons, this is most meaningful when a dancer in a soloist role is mentioned specially, rather than just the principle role. So I suppose that the conclusion of this ramble is that the audience does declare its stars, within certain parameters already set by the choreography and casting. It's just a fact of life in a small company that the principle dancers fill corps roles as well. Small companies just can't afford to pay one dancer more than the others and then have her just dance in one out of four ballets on a program.

I'm operating on way too little information here. But I think that being manic depressive would be enough to explain the reservedness, the lack of desire to travel internationally. I see this in my manic depressive friends: you find something that works for you and keeps you on an even keel, and you keep going in that groove. I'm sure there are plenty of American ballerinas who would make a similar statement. Allegra Kent seems that way to me, both in person and in her book. The dancers I know tend to be that way as well. I think it has more to do with personality than nationality. Maybe this is a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease: if you're not a dancer, you only hear from the loudmouths. I don't think things are as dire as all that. My artistic director is very humble, and that attitude permeates the entire company, especially his best dancers. There are no ranks such as corps, soloist, principle, etc. Experienced dancers are not given license to act like an a** just because they're experienced. People help each other out as well, and interaction with audience usually downplays the "mystique" of being a dancer. But that's not what counts on stage. On stage, you can easily identify the parts as principle, soloist and corps. The lead dancers are billed above the rest under the ballet they lead. And (no surprise here) the same dancers get the principle parts every season --- they're the ones with the most experience. Pay scales vary as well, according to experience. Therefore, I'm a bit confused. People have pointed to my company in the past as an example of one "without hierarchy". But that's not really true, as I described above. Same with Balanchine's NYCB and its "no star" system. Maybe this discussion is about companies that create parts based on the lowest common denominator of experience in the company? Seems like a waste to me, and not at all challenging for anyone past the first year or two.

When you watch ballet, are you more interested in: * The Dancers (who is playing what role tonight, who danced better tonight, etc) or * The Choreography (what do you think of that new ballet or new choreography to an old ballet) ???

In college, I saw some student choreography to the adagio (long before Center Stage). It really led me to appreciated that music, but I can't say much about what the choreography was like anymore.

Wow! Slightly stark, in my opinion.

Mateo's Waltz of the Flowers involves three groups plus Dew Drop: a duet, a trio and a quartet. The different groups are costumed differently. Each group of flowers has a different movement quality. That is what intruiges me the most when I watch it. The yellow flowers ("daffodiles" in my mind) are "darting". The other two? I forget Mateo's words for them. In my mind, the purple flowers are "gracious and flowing", and the other ones are somewhere inbetween. I'm never quite sure how to describe it to myself.