Helene

But imagine if someone who only knew Baryshnikov, and watched him online, was gently nudged towards some other ballet... Or someone who watched Yo Yo Ma was gently nudged to watch "Falling Down Stairs"...

I'm sure Yo-Yo Ma and the estate of Isaac Stern would disagree There's far more to the PBS archives than dance. The advantage of individual downloads is that they aren't that expensive to maintain, and the advantage of a vault is that no one production has to stand alone. There are plenty of statistics available for paid downloads, and any profits could be distributed by the number of paid downloads. I'm a subscriber to Medici TV, which has a wide range of offerings. Most of them are classical music, but they also vault at least some of the Bolshoi Ballet HD's for on demand viewing. They do recommendations based on what I've just seen. For example after watching a documentary on the great Flamenco cantaor Agujetas, there were recommendations for two other Flamenco-related videos. I was ready to see more; I might not have chosen these videos off a list. For the subscription model, there's no monetary risk for trying the unknown unless you're at the end of the sub period and running out of time, and the system itself can prompt you there. The key is to have enough volume and keep a steady stream of new offerings to keep subscribers interested. That doesn't mean newly produced videos, but if I had a big inventory, I would release enough to make it worthwhile to join and slowly add the rest. It would be fantastic if a production team could set up shop at, for example, the Vail International Dance Festival, and shoot away, the way Medici has a whole series of videos from the Annecy Festival and Romanian TV is streaming from the Enescu Festival. A couple of weeks at a festival provides a good number of offerings.

A consortium might be able to invest in the equipment, producers, and distribution avenues that would mitigate the risk for individual companies producing on their own. This might be spearheaded by NPR, but, if not, half of the directors at ballet companies know each other, and, at least outside the NY companies, they know they couldn't pull this off on their own. I know PNB got a multi-year grant for using new media to promote the arts, which is where those wonderful, albeit short videos, could come -- they could snag Lindsay Thomas for the production team -- and there might be some money out there to help kickstart it. There's also a treasure trove in PBS archives from when it was more robust, everything from "Live in Lincoln Center" to "Dance in America," things that people have been dying to see again. (Can you imagine comparing Sallie Wilson and Cynthia Gregory in "Pillar of Fire"?) I'm not sure if any future broadcast provisions were in the original contracts with the featured organizations, or if they addressed alternate media, which would have been VHS/beta and maybe laserdisk in the high-volume years, and I suspect they'd have to re-negotiate. Ballet companies, who might be less interested in showcasing dancers who are no longer with the company, might balk, while few care that the second violinist in the NY Phil was someone else in 1978, and Yo-Yo Ma and Isaac Stern are forever, but that would be losing legacy. The archives could be the start of a "Met on Demand"-like model, with individual downloads available on iTunes or amazon.com. In general, "Nutcracker" performances have been aired at a time when families are swamped and exhausted, and the "Nutcracker" isn't going to displace commercial films at the mall cinemas where it would be convenient to dump the kids while getting the holiday shopping done. In addition, producers have made some questionable, shoot-oneself-in-the-foot choices: the taped San Francisco Ballet "Nutcracker" was shown in Vancouver the same day as the live National Ballet of Canada "Nutcracker," and at overlapping times, and there were two dozen of us max watching SFB movie, which, of course, sends back the message that there's no audience. If nothing else, the Met in HD has proven that there's an audience.

Pontois is channeling Nureyev in that variation.

That is a spectacular photo.

Thank you so much for the translation, volcanohunter. We're now back full circle to Dmitrichenko, the not contrite.

Thank you, volcanohunter. I remember seeing the Royal Opera "La Traviata" with Fleming and Hampson in Vancouver, but the years have flown by so quickly, maybe it was before the Met in HD. I'm visualizing that it was shown at the big multi-plex on Granville, former main venue of the Vancouver International Film Festival, that is no more. (It's being developed.) Granville 7 was part of the Empire Cinemas chain.

Unfortunately, the way the show is cut and what is emphasized, not a lot of publicizing the art is happening.

Broadening the audience does not just mean putting butts in seats in the theater. HD broadcasts wouldn't be targeted to NYC. They'd be broadening the audience nation- and world-wide to a market that sees Balanchine through the POB's, Bolshoi's, and Mariinsky's take instead of NYCB's. It would also re-engage the interest of former NYers who were company folliwers/supporters back in the day. Southern Florida theaters should be able to thrive on this. I think it's clear from the article why the Met's model is different than anyone else's would be. When it boils down to it, unions and distributors, who took a big beating on SFB's "Nutcracker," for example, had the choice then and have one now to accept this as a break-even at best. They might have a valid argument that the risk is too great and a failure would impact them greatly, because NYCB transmissions wouldn't net over 5% of the operating budget. a number of theaters out west who show Met in HD are arthouse cinemas, and this hasn't been their pattern. I think it would be a bigger issue to get distributors to take the product. Yes, in fact people around the world pay $18 (or $20-25) in Canada to see productions from La Scala and the Royal Opera House, and the Bolshoi Opera has long been one of the world's great companies. The collaboration with French production teams is already in place for the ballet, and the Bolshoi Opera has stars that worldwide audiences clamor to see. They'd also have the advantage of packaging it together with the Bolshoi Ballet in terms of distribution.

If the Met has technology and the satellite in Lincoln Center's backyard, plus the experience and expertise, I would approach the Met if I were NYCB, ABT, the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard, the theater and jazz groups in the complex, etc. to see if there are any opportunities to co-produce with them. Yes, they's have to negotiate with the unions. They would have one place to go for dancers, though, instead of working with multiple artists, and dancers are the right age to embrace new technologies. The arguments for audience-building and fundraising apply to ballet dancers: the more funds that come into the company, the better off the dancers are, one step removed. There are also so few opportunities for dancers to be known through recordings, outside a few places where high-ish quality videos make their way regularly to YouTube, where we can compare not only three Mariinsky ballerinas' Nikiyas, for example, but multiple performances of one ballerina. Most NYCB dancers are known solely from promotional clips and written descriptions. HD broadcasts, which can then be monetized through streaming, downloads, and DVD's, would allow more than locals and visitors to see these dancers, especially when the Balanchine and Robbins Trusts have control over what can be seen of the best of their rep. The Philharmonic, I'd guess, would try to feature guest artists and would be in negotiation with the orchestra's union and the YoYo Ma's. The Met made itself a "National" company long ago with its radio broadcasts and has made a huge splash with the Met in HD series. In Vancouver, an hour after sales opened, the pickings were slim in the big theater except for the first five rows for this season's operas (except, predictably, for "The Nose). Especially where there are no local sports teams, fans grab onto some team for which to root. (You can see NY Yankees hats and Manchester United jerseys everywhere.) Ted Turner broadcast Atlanta Braves games on his national cable station and grabbed a lot of non-affiliated fans. I haven't seen any stats to indicate that Met in HD has caused big drops in local attendance and support, although especially as people age, staying local and going to a movie theater on a Saturday during the day will become a more viable option, but this demographic stops attending live performances anyway. The ticket prices, not much more than most club cover charges, are a low barrier to entry for young people, and for older people on a fixed income, they are affordable. There's a big opportunity for the first dance company out in this media to become "America's Company" and capture the loyalties especially of those in ballet-deprived areas of the country -- there are more local orchestras and opera groups/companies than ballet companies, hence fewer local affiliations in ballet -- but also where there is a ballet company. Porn, on average, doesn't stop people from wanting sex: it makes them want to have more of the live experience, and I don't see why this wouldn't be true of ballet on HD vs. live performances (where available).