I was recently talking to a dance publicist: together we fretted about the continued existence of dance as a viable theatrical concern. I said that I thought it was easier for the smaller groups to survive, given that they don’t have the huge overhead of the big ballet companies. She thought that it was the smaller modern companies that have the harder row to hoe, as they have smaller audiences, are less accessible to mainstream, have fewer funding possibilities.
But fundamentally, the reality is that in all likelihood the answer to her lament about how this or that choreographer will continue to make new works, is that they WON’T. They’re not going to be able to. There is going to be a massive attrition.
A country that refuses to cut a yearly outlet of one trillion dollars on military, that taxes the rich and the now colossally super rich at the lowest effective rates since before the Depression (the first one, I mean), that is avid to slash funding for the most vulnerable in the middle of the greatest economic distress, is certainly not going to have either the cash reserve or political will to fund art.
And private patrons? Well the rich tend to recede when they sense need. Importunacy is a turn-off. They generally want to contribute to the already anointed, to what is perceived as blue chip. Thus the fact that people are, according to another dance world insider I talked to recently, “lining up” to give money to Benjamin Millepied after that Black Swan hustle that he and Darren Aronovsky laid on the ballet world.
And of course middle class audiences are strapped and will only become more so now that a draconic debt deal is upon us that will turn the recession into the “lesser Depression” that Paul Krugman has been warning about.
Except for the AIDS crisis, the dance world has been pretty much apolitical for a long time, and that, too, is another cautionary lesson that we can take away from the current decline.