It’s easy to feel that much of the rich and super rich in this country have collectively lost their minds. They’re paying the lowest tax rates they’ve enjoyed since 1928, but they don’t want to pay any taxes at all. But they do want the poor and middle class to pay through the nose.
And of course the dance world is wackier than most worlds, so the behavior is perhaps even more aberrational. In dance and above all in ballet, what’s happened is exactly what I described was happening in my 1999 piece for Ballet Review, “Ballet and the Individual Talent.”
With ballet now almost completely dependent on private and corporate funding, the resultant entitlement experienced by patrons often seems so obdurate that even basic socialization seems to have gone by the wayside. And that is pushing the ballet world further down.
These people aren’t my friends, but sometimes they’re people I’ve met and spoken to. I have to say I find them jaw-droppingly foolish and rude when they suddenly don’t return greetings after I’ve written something that was not totally adoring of someone they’ve funded or simply admire. Their proprietary sense has reached such an extreme, excessive degree. It’s as if by adopting a dancer or choreographer they’ve purchased a diamond necklace and I’ve gone into the vault and scratched it. It simply is beyond them, apparently, to comprehend that I am a professional writer and critic–not a water carrier. And certainly, if I criticize someone, I tell you why–I don’t just simply toss epithets around. And, I don’t mind saying, I do it sincerely.
I like Arlene Cooper, though. Two years ago she came up to me, said she had me on google alert, and that she’d completely disagreed with the pan I’d given in City Arts of the opening night of New York City Ballet’s American Music Festival. This wasn’t the first time I’ve talked to her, but even if I had never spoken to her, I would been happy to converse. She expressed her opinion with a smile–none of that weird, surly glare you get with some of her brethren. Although Arlene had probably contributed some funding, it didn’t seem as though she were simply protecting an investment.