citibob

I dance for the other ballet company in Boston, Jose Mateo's Ballet Theatre. It exists to produce the work of its own artistic director/choreographer, and for the past several years has received excellent reviews from the very same Christine Temin and other dance critics. The company has no problem selling seats and is not running into budgetary "surprises" due to lack of ticket sales at the moment (although admittedly, it has much fewer seats to sell). Mr. Mateo has his own ideas of what's wrong with BB. Most of these problems are things he thinks is wrong with most of the way ballet is done, not Boston Ballet specifically. At the risk of sounding critical of an organization I know little about (BB), I will repeat, these are things wrong IN GENERAL with ballet, not with any specific organization: * Outdated acting style (acting has changed in the past 100 years in other theater arts, except for ballet) * Outdated narrative style. * Full-length ballets are too long for a modern audience. * Too much performance of works by dead choreographers. (Ballet is a living art, and seems to work best when the choreographer is alive and can be right there working with the company). * Lack of choreographic consistency in Nutcrackers (most are done by many choreographers) * Movement style that reads as "unnatural" and "aloof" to an audience (modern audiences respond better to the "personal connection" more common in modern dance). * Lack of integration between training of dancers and the choreography danced by those dancers (Balanchine had this, but many large ballet organizations do not). BB could very well be a top ten company. That means it has a good budget and is able to hire great dancers with it. John Cranko was no slouch of a choreographer either; Onegin is considered a real masterpiece. All that could be true. But if the Boston audience isn't "there" with the company, it just won't come. Boston audience is notoriously difficult for dance, so please give BB some credit for its efforts. People I know who saw Onegin were pleased with it. The Wang Center might be a mistake. However, getting an "appropriately sized" theater in Boston is really hard. Maybe the Emerson Majestic, at just under 1000 seats, would be more appropriate for Boston Ballet's rep performances. I do not know whether they have investigated options other than the Wang.

For the just-finished Fall Season, my company employed 16 dancers. Three of them smoked; one of those three has been trying to quit, with varying success, for the past year. A few more dancers (3, I think) were hired for the Nutcracker now. One of those dancers used to smoke, but has also been trying very hard to quit.