One of the things that’s wrecking dance and particularly ballet is the ticket prices.
I just looked at an interview I did literally decades ago with a friend of the family who was a social work student, then professional, and a New York City Ballet devotee in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She recalled how popular prices brought an extraordinary cross section of New Yorkers to City Center to be enchanted by everything that NYCB had to offer.
Conservatory art forms like ballet and opera are continuously pining for a younger demographic. Doing something about the prices might help. It certainly did back in post-WW2 Manhattan.
Fall for Dance’s why-not-see-dance-for-the-price-of-a-movie [although considered relatively and put into mechanically reproduced-perspective, flick prices are way too high as well] results in sold out houses at City Center.
Even better were the free tickets available at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park earlier this week, when Fall for Dance treated us to a preview program that returned dance to this open-air bastion of the Public theater.