Seeking Fans, Ballet Scrambles for a Killer AppMore here.
New York Times, Sunday, April 22, 2007
"...Ballet, like opera and classical music, has a serious image problem in America, and companies are increasingly trying to combat it and attract new, younger viewers.
This struggle has even reached the gates of the vaunted City Ballet. When the company opens its spring season on Tuesday, what happens onstage will be business as usual, but the packaging will be anything but, as City Ballet broadens the experiment with thematic programming that it began during the winter.
Viewers may choose individual nights like “International Balanchine” or series like “Girls’ Night Out,” which includes desserts and “girl talk” with ballerinas and has caused much eye-rolling among balletomanes."
One thing they could do for ballet in general (though mostly it'll have to be the big companies): put more ballet on TV and PBS, except actually market the showings and produce the programs in a way that won't make the audience fall asleep while watching.
Yes, I know TV is not an ideal medium for dance, blah blah blah. Except that the audience critiquing the television broadcast as not ideal is already converted to dance, and thus already experiencing it live. They don't need much convincing to get them in the theater.
And as for TV not being an ideal medium - I truly believe that when the program is produced and packaged correctly, those drawbacks can be overcome. I've been getting BBC's broadcasts of the Royal Ballet sent to me from a friend in the UK and they're truly wonderful and fun to watch. The ballets themselves are framed by intelligent and entertaining features and commentary (usually delivered by Deborah Bull and including interviews with very well spoken RB dancers and coaches). In the Ashton Centenary broadcast from a few years ago, the ballets were separated into digestible chunks that balanced a full, unadulterated viewing of each ballet with very well produced context segments to prepare the viewer for what they were about to watch (this broadcast was also screened in New York at the New York Public Library a few months after the broadcast).
Contrast that to the Live from Lincoln Center/New York City Ballet broadcast of the Balanchine Centenary on PBS, from around the same time. NYCB brought in Sarah Jessica Parker for awkward hosting duties on stage, and Susan Stroman gave cheesy and dumbed down commentary over pre-filmed segments - she's not even regularly involved in the ballet world beyond the one peice NYCB commissed - all in a rather poor attempt to connect supposedly high-falutin' ballet with the popular world of Broadway and Hollywood. Nice that they tried, but it came off flat (and yet the Royal got it right by focusing on the artists themselves...). Further, City Ballet's ballet programming on stage, selected for its televisability, was disjointed and bizarre. Who's to know from that program why Balanchine was so special? Between the two broadcasts, there was an enormous difference in quality - the Ashton 100 drew the viewer in, the Balanchine one would make the unitiated turn away (even I nearly did). Package and choose the television programs intelligently, and the audience will come.There's also the issue of marketing the TV programs. It's all well and good when ABT and PBS film Swan Lake, but it won't matter if no one watches it. I'm on ABT's email list, and no one bothered to send out a notice to ABT's own loyal customers that it was going to be on TV. They could have included notes in their live perforamnce programs, sent out eblasts, included a little box on mailings already being distributed, had regular touring theatres on their seasons (like OCPAC, or the Kennedy Center or Detroit) send eblasts or notes to patrons; PBS could have run ads, put it in newspapers - it's as much a performance as a live one, and has the potential to reach an even wider one. Yes, I know all the mainstream marketing channels are extremely expensive (but there's cheaper stuff like YouTube and MySpace now). Still, neither PBS nor ABT seemed to have made a noticeable effort to tell anyone it was on television for free!
PBS seems to be the only feasible place to braodcast ballet, as the networks don't seem very interested in it (plus the idea of PBS as the "arts" channel is very appealing, an extension of their educational programming). And I'm grateful to them for bothering to air it in the first place. But PBS and the affiliate stations need to air the programs in a decent time slot. They shouldn't go up against American Idol and Heroes; put ballet perhaps on a Sunday afternoon when are people relaxing at home. Don't put it on at 2:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, and don't air it during the season return of Lost. PBS should know that they aren't the highest rated prime time, so putting their unique programming that should be noticed in a place where people will watch it can only help. And it's not just ballet programming where they schedule strangely; there was a bit during TV press tour earlier this year when TV critics begged PBS to delay the airdate of Ken Burns' documentary "The War" because the network had scheduled the airdate for the exact same week as premiere week on the big four networks. Newspaper editors wouldn't let the critics cover it, they argued. PBS relented eventually (an article here), but why didn't they think of it before? Their special programming could get a bigger viewership if it isn't directly competing against "Lost". And when the ideal timeslot is found - tell people that it's airing in the first place.
My introduction to ballet was finding it on PBS. I didn't go out and by a ticket right away - it took nearly a few years from those first random viewings of tutus on the telly for me to plunge in at the theater. But I don't think I would have gotten to the theater without those PBS broadacsts. The broadcasts at least exposed me to the art form and paved the way for understanding when I did end up seeing it live. Of course, it should be noted that I am by no means a good litmus test for the experiences of an average audience member. I'm already inclined to like performing arts, so I'm easily seduced. But that's not to say that other similarly inclined people - the same people who could be seduced by a "Girls Night Out" promotion at NYC Ballet - could stop channel flipping should they cross over that program on TV.
The Metropolitan Opera is having great success by virtually giving away their stuff this year - first at the movies for $18 (instead of $200 at the opera house), putting it on PBS, and broadcasting it on the radio and internet. Sure, I'm not getting all the same joys of hearing those voices and instruments in the real acoustic environment, but I'm at least being exposed to the art form and am starting to check out opera CDs from the library to learn more about opera. (My growing interest in opera, by the way: not a good thing... as though I needed another expensive art form to blow my measely paychecks on!)
And, yes, cost is a huge issue for arts organizations and I do realize that. But if they're going to invest in one broadcast every two years, at least market it so people will watch it, and produce it at the level it should be produced at.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that television is FREE to the viewer? What better way to let potential audiences sample a product than free?
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Phew. So I rambled a bit, and didn't spend much time addressing the article above. But I had thoughts to share about ballet on tv, which is the way I get a lot of dance here in Los Angeles.
As for the other issues raised in the article? I think there is nothing too wrong about packaging the performances as "Girls Night Out" or "Gay Night Out". Just as long as those themes don't start creeping onto the stage, I'm fine with it. Keep the art pure, do whatever you want outside - which is what these companies seem to be doing well enough. And I think New York City Ballet's video features on their new Romeo & Juliet are absolutely brilliant (go here and click "Behind the Curtain", and also check out videographer Kristin Sloan's huge ballet/dance blog here). The balletomane in me groans at the thought of another Romeo & Juliet, but the videos are so much fun! The Great Dance Weblog, who generously links to me here, wrote that smaller regional companies can also successfully get in on the online video action. Anaheim Ballet put a well-produced segment on YouTube and got over 500,000 hits.
It's interesting that the article only focused on ballet audience development though, since a lot of the things that ballet companies are trying are becoming standard across the arts industry. Many of the larger regional theater companies around here - Center Theatre Group, the Geffen, etc. - have Gay Nights, Girls Nights, Art Lover Nights, etc. The LA Phil has a Casual Fridays package, a First Nights package for unitiated listeners, and a Friday at 11am series for people who don't have to work during the day (seniors?). As much as arts purists decry such marketing tactics, the art forms need audiences to survive and thrive - and if it gets more appreciative butts in the seats, fabulous.
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