Pacific Northwest Ballet Faces Financial Challenges Ahead

 The other day, my wife and I took our lives in our hands and went to a live performance of the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) for the first time in a couple of years. In times past we had been subscribers and I had been a contributor.

Well, that's an exaggeration of course: we wore masks, had seats where we were unlikely to be breathing much of anyone else's air (there was a decent crowd present, but the large auditorium was far from full) and avoided doing things we used to enjoy -- drinks and some food in the foyer, a post-show Q&A with one of the dancers. 

As live performances of one sort or another have returned, there have been no reports in Seattle of Covid outbreaks at such venues. While we were at the ballet, the Dave Matthews Band was playing in a sold-out arena nearby with no reports of any problems.  But, as a couple of our fully vaccinated family members can attest, Covid remains a significant threat and one senses it is still wise to carefully ration occasions when one is not going to be socially distant, keeping one's priorities straight (family and close friends first) in the process.

The good news: the quality level of PNB's performances remains very high despite a couple of very difficult years including a lengthy stretch of no live performances because of Covid. PNB is one of the few ballet companies in the U.S. with a full orchestra (plus a highly rated school). If the live music ever goes, also-ran status could lie ahead. 

We saw a mixed rep called "The Seasons' Canon" that was a bit of a smorgasbord as mixed reps frequently are: an opening number that served to advertise the company's commitment -- first and foremost it seems these days -- to diversity; then a classic Balanchine offering for the traditionalists, and finally an extravaganza (54 dancers on stage -- how many U.S. ballet companies can do that?) for those who enjoy spectacle -- and "something new" -- first and foremost. The last was a big hit with audiences according to a couple of home-town reviews, neither of which had a single critical word to say about anything.

In my humble opinion, while visually compelling and attractively danced to a version of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," what the final piece had to do with "ballet" was far less noticeable than what it didn't. 

I mention all of this because as a contributor in past years, I became curious about how the company was doing financially, prompted in part because of an email I received from PNB's director of development (fund raising) after I purchased my tickets. The email contained a letter from PNB's Artistic Director, Peter Boal, a distinguished former dancer with the New York City Ballet who has now headed PNB for almost a couple of decades -- generally to great critical acclaim.

The letter began: "We have a very exciting rep in store for you. This is one you will want to see more than once and one you’ll want to recommend to friends, acquaintances, strangers ... everyone!"

Well -- I did see it more than once, the second time digitally for a modest $35. (Because of union-related issues, the digital version was available for only five days after a week or so of live performances ended, which is unfortunate because PNB's digital-only offerings during the height of the Covid lockdowns attracted viewers from around the U.S. and various foreign countries.)

In any event, I'm sure you got the message from Mr. Boal's letter: PNB badly needs more ticket sales.

To understand what's happening, one has to go back to the last time PNB released an annual report (separate from its annual, required financial statement as a tax-exempt entity). That was before the pandemic, for the company's fiscal year ending June 2019.

"This past year was challenging financially. All of us know art can only exist in concert with wise
financial stewardship. We understand the need to present excellence in all we do, but only with
the practicality of our limited resources. When necessary, we make the hard decisions,
evaluating numbers of staff or dancers, adjusting programs, and seeking your help to build
revenue and enthusiasm."  So said Mr. Boal, observing that his role was more than just that of an artistic director. "At times, I'm the best person to find a strategic expense reduction," he said.

More in the way of explanation was provided by Ellen Walker, who had just finished her fifth year as PNB's Executive Director -- in essence, the company's business manager. 

Looking back over the past year, she noted that various external economic and political events had thrown "a disruptive, negative halo over The Nutcracker sales." (More on the critical importance of The Nutcracker later.)  "Sleeping Beauty" sales were on track to earn back a significant measure of that loss when Seattle's February snowstorms brought the region to a halt."  While that elaborate, expensive, somewhat out-of-date, three-act production (thereafter retired from PNB's repertoire) went on as scheduled, "our expected upside upside from ticket sales evaporated with the weather."

About six months after that fiscal year ended, the Covid pandemic arrived. 

In fiscal 2019, PNB Nutcracker ticket sales were just short of $5.7 million, down about 11% from $6.4 million the previous year.  Why is that such a blow?  Total ticket sales for the year (including Sleeping Beauty) were $11.58 million, meaning The Nutcracker alone accounted for just short of 50% of the total. In the preceding year, they had been slightly over 50%.

In the most recent fiscal year, ended June 2022 (the first year in which the company got back to live performances), Nutcracker ticket sales totaled just under $4.9 million (thanks in part by my two granddaughters attending for the first time, in their cute dresses and face masks), or about 49% of total sales.

While PNB and other ballet companies talk a lot about new productions -- and rightly so (what would choreographers and dancers do without them even if they are often not as memorable as one would hope), PNB might be more accurately called The Pacific Northwest Nutcracker Company. Same goes for many other ballet companies, I am sure. 

In contrast to $11.58 million in total ticker sales in the year ended June 2019, expenses for the company and its performances totaled just under $18.4 million. In other words, ticket sales covered just 63%. If administrative expenses of $2.2 million and fund-raising costs of $1.2 million were thrown in, ticker sales covered only 53% of costs.

Now, let's be fair: by the time fiscal 2019 had rolled around, the company had been in operation for about 48 years, and I suspect the ratios for many of those years were even more challenging. Contributions, by far the most important of which (before government support during the pandemic -- more on that soon) were from individuals. Corporate support -- despite the presence of corporate names everywhere -- have been pathetic, and especially so given Seattle's significant number of hugely profitable companies.

Well, if the last fiscal year before the pandemic appeared to be signaling the need for belt tightening, audience building (PNB with the aid of a significant grant has been trying, but it is clearly and uphill effort [thank goodness for all those little girls with ballerina dreams dancing in their heads]) and a search for additional contributions, the current outlook is perhaps even more dauting. 

Where is Makenzie Scott (the former wife of Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame) when PNB needs her?  Hopefully waiting in the wings as she continues to rapidly dispose of her divorce-settlement billions. In quasi-Marxian terms, "her" billions are simply the surplus profits Amazon scooped up from American consumers, in large part, one can argue, by eliminating much of its competition through predatory pricing in its early years. Not so much now: the company routinely advises customers products on its website can often be obtained at lower cost elsewhere, but then there is often Amazon's "free" shipping. In other words, customers have been getting "taken" (to use a polite term) both coming and going.

Why does the appearance of an "angel" donor matter more for PNB now than in the past?

Let's take a look at the most recent fiscal year.

PNB got a whopping (relative to its size) $12 million in support from the federal government, little if any of which is likely to be repeated absent new government initiatives. Of the total $8 million constituted an award from the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) fund, a federal Covid relief effort that ceased accepting new applications in Aug. 2021. 

Fortunately, thanks in part to other federal aid, PNB needed only about $3 million of that to help cover fiscal 2022 expenses and the remainder was set aside to help cover expected shortfalls during the next three years or so. 

The other aid was just over $3 million in Paycheck Protection (another Covid relief program) loan forgiveness and just over $1 million in federal tax credits. Tax credits for an entity that pays no federal tax? It's explained somewhere in the financial report, available online, if anyone is really interested.

All of which leaves one wondering -- at a time when Covid still calls for caution. There are huge billboard ads for The Nutcracker in Seattle at present and hopefully the weather and the pandemic will cooperate. In the first half of 2023, the company is again scheduled to perform it's excellent version of "Gisele" and I'm looking forward to seeing it and especially if I can catch my current favorite ballerina -- Angelica Generosa -- in the title role. 

That's it for now, but I may have one or more posts on the company's recent mixed rep, mentioned above. 

Goodreads Giveaway for Gina/Diane, a Book About Abortion

 

Above is the cover of my second novella, "Gina/Diane," first self-published several years ago. But because it is about abortion, I thought it might be a good time to make a small promotional effort, given the U.S. Supreme Court's current agenda and very recent deliberations.

"Gina/Diane," inspired by what happened to a woman I once knew, looks back to a time -- not that long ago -- when abortion was illegal in the U.S.  This is not that woman's story per se. It's fiction, set in an entirely different location: an out-of-season North Carolina beach community. But the more poignant aspects of it are all too true with respect to at least one life, and I suspect others as well.

The promotional effort took the form of a Goodreads giveaway for books available on Amazon's Kindle platform, which is to say either on a Kindle reader or on a computer or a smartphone equipped with a Kindle app. 

One pays about $120 to have Goodreads, an arm of Amazon, run a month-long promotion of the type I purchased.  Results were reported to be as follows: 533 people entered the drawing of which 100 were awarded a free Kindle edition of the book and 465 people supposedly put it on a "want-to-read" list. 

 Based on the results of a similar giveaway I ran for my first book, "Manhattan Morning" back some time ago, that doesn't mean much, if anything at all.

(By the way, if you click on the link above, you can now get a free, illustrated edition of "Manhattan Morning" in an easy-to-read PDF format. As Manhattan is changing, the book is gradually becoming a document of some historical relevance as well as a good story for those disinclined toward violence, weird sex, etc. etc. And the ending closely tracks a real-life incident.)

In my experience, a Goodreads giveaway is a poor way to market a book (the best way is to somehow become a member of the Literary Industrial Complex at which point the New Yorker may publish an excerpt masquerading as a short story and interview you with some softball questions. But a Goodreads giveaway is easy, leaving one plenty of time for other pursuits.

As for "Gina/Diane" itself, what can I say other than: "I highly recommend it!" 

Why Bother, One Wonders

I've just published a new, illustrated edition of my novella "Manhattan Morning" for Amazon's Kindle reader. It can be read on one of Amazon's physical devices or on a smartphone or computer where the Kindle reader app has been installed.

Now the question is, should I attempt to market this book?  I ask because without any marketing, the original version of "Manhattan Morning," still available without illustrations as a print-on-demand book, has, shall we say, remained "undiscovered."

It's an uphill battle and probably one that can't be won.  That's because most people read only or largely within certain genres these days and "Manhattan Morning" falls into one that is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- highly unpopular.

Writers write, an online portal that offers courses and advice to creative writers, business writers and bloggers has a list of the 17 most popular genres of fiction and, no surprise, "literary fiction," which is where "Manhattan Morning" would fall, is dead last.

Here's what writers write has to say about it:

"Literary Fiction. This genre focuses on the human condition and it is more concerned with the inner lives of characters and themes than plot. Literary fiction is difficult to sell and continues to decline in popularity."

I've also heard literary fiction -- the stuff that largely populates what is known as "the canon" -- described as a "niche category," read mostly perhaps by college students -- because they have to. Well, they certainly don't have to read "Manhattan Morning" and few if any will.

So what's REALLY popular these days? "Romance novels," which in contemporary form, are mostly written by women and heavily into explicit sex.  The most well-known, of course, is "Fifty Shades of Grey," which has old over 125 million copies worldwide.  Interestingly, it was first released as a self-published e-book.

The author is middle-aged woman named E.L. James and graphic sex is what the story, and its various sequels, are apparently all about.

According to an article entitled "The Business of the Romance Novel" published by JSTOR Daily, 

romance novels "despite their decided lack of cultural clout" are what's driving publishing these days.

"The average income for a romance writer has tripled in the digital age—an especially impressive feat in the age that finds writers of other genres struggling," the article said.

According to JSTOR, the romance sector had its ups and downs until 1972 when a woman named Kathleen E. Woodiwiss published a book considered to be the first modern "bodice ripper" -- "The Flame and the Flower." It had what was considered an overtly sexual cover and graphic, exotic sex scenes that occurred early in the book. Eventually it sold over 2.5 million copies.

And so it went from there. As we know, sex sells.

What about "Manhattan Morning?"  Does it have any sex and could it squeeze into the romance genre?  Yes, it does have sex -- possibly a bit exotic -- but not explicit.  No bodices are ripped much less anything more graphic than that. And it isn't written by a woman, which probably no doubt undermines its credibility when it comes to romance and what that means.

So I'm afraid it will have to languish as "literary fiction."  

I'll keep you posted as to the results of any marketing attempts. 

Fertile New Ground for Fiction

Amazon just announced new devices and services that will allow the company to remotely open a locked door and deliver packages inside a person's house as opposed to leaving them outside.

But according to an article in The Seattle Times, there is much more to it than just that.

A Poem Pertinent to "Gina/Diane"

The other day, I came across a poem in the New York Times Sunday Magazine  entitled "Self-Portrait as Myself," which you can read by clicking on that title.

I found this particularly poignant because the sentiments expressed by the author, Meghan O'Rourke, are pertinent to my novella "Gina/Diane," which can be found in print at The Book Patch or as an e-book at Amazon.

I also like the manner in which the poem promotes additional thoughts.

For instance, one line talks in terms of "casting a lawyer of snow over our losses." This rather vividly brings to mind Gretta's sorrow and Gabriel's sense of inadequacy at the conclusion of James Joyce's story, "The Dead."

Later, the poem talks of "the propeller planes humming past."  One of the joys of sitting on our roof deck in the summer here in Seattle is watching float planes on their way to or from Lake Union. These are mostly De Havilland "Beavers," the last of which was built in 1967. Fortunately, they appear likely to keep flying more or less indefinitely.

Listening to Women Who Have Had Abortions

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, my second novella -- "Gina/Diane" -- is about a woman who has had an abortion.

With the abortion rights controversy heating up once again in the wake of the recent U.S. presidential election, those interested might want to take a look at the book. They can find it as an e-book on Amazon or as a paperback at The Book Patch.

Meanwhile, here is an opinion piece from the New York Times on the topic entitled "Who Should You Listen to on Abortion? People Who’ve Had Them."

"Gina/Diane" -- Life After an Abortion

I recently published my second novella, entitled "Gina/Diane."  It is available as an e-book on Amazon and Smashwords, and as a printed paperback at The Book Patch. (Click on the names of those retailers to purchase the book.)

Here is what it is about:

When a younger man named Hartley encounters and older woman named Diane dancing with her dog on a lonely, out-of-season beach in North Carolina, he ends up unexpectedly spending the evening with her.  She's a shape-shifting cougar with a problematic pet, but she also has a poignant and disturbing story to tell about an abortion at age 17, and how that event impacted her subsequent life.

When Hartley inadvertently asks a question that opens Diane's floodgates, he finds that he has no way out of an exquisitely uncomfortable situation.  A bachelor who lives with a cat in Manhattan, empathy isn't Hartley's strongest suit and he has no prior dealing with what Diane has been through.

Thanks in part to a photo that helps him understand more about what Diane lost, he listens with increasing interest to her gritty account of how she clawed herself upward only to have her past rob her of her greatest success. Diane appreciates Hartley's willingness to listen and she's intrigued that he might be able to make good use of her story despite finding him lacking in certain important respects. Can the evening result in a rewarding outcome for them both -- and that pesky dog?

An Answer to a Reader of "Manhattan Morning"

In my last post about comments from readers of "Manhattan Morning," someone asked several questions that I didn't then answer. 

Here's the answer to one of them: "where did the story come from and how much of it is autobiographical?"

A Paperless Society? Not When Bill Gates Reads Books

I took a break from blogging during most of the month of December, passing up many interesting topics in the process, but instead, got a number of other things done. So I'm starting the New Year with more of a clean slate than usual.

Here's a very brief item to get back into harness.

The New York Times has a story today (Jan. 2, 2016) about Microsoft founder Bill Gates reviewing books on his blog Gates Notes.  No surprise, as a celebrity, when he recommends a book, a bounce in sales follows.

What would we, a nation of sheep, do without celebrities? How in the would would we know what to  eat, what to drink, what to wear and (think Oprah) what to read?

What struck me about the article was not what Gates has been reading -- non-fiction for the most part, it appears -- but how he reads. According to The Times, not in an electronic format.

"Mr. Gates says he reads about 50 books in a year, eschewing digital readers for old-fashioned books on paper. When he is busy with work, he reads about a book or two a week but will consume four or five in the same period while vacationing with family," the newspaper reported.

One advantage of paper is that one can scribble in the margins.

"He (Gates) rarely posts negative reviews of books, explaining that he sees no need to waste anyone’s time telling them why they shouldn’t bother reading something. He doesn’t spare himself, though. 'I have a habit, which I don’t recommend, of finishing essentially every book I start,' he said. 'And if I disagree with a book I spend lots of time writing notes in the margins. Perversely, this means that the more I dislike a book, the longer I spend reading it.'" the article said.

I like to scribble notes in the margins of books that I read, too, but generally not to argue with the authors. It's a way to more easily get back to material I like or think is interesting or important.

Fortunately, Gates isn't the only one who finds books in print more satisfying that a stream of text on some electronic device. We are fortunate to have a bookstore a block and a half away and it is doing exceptionally well -- right under the nose of Amazon, which, by the way, recently opened its own bricks-and-mortar store selling books in print at our local high-end shopping mall.