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. 

The World of Ballet: Changes Coming to San Francisco

 Today's news: the San Francisco Ballet, the oldest ballet company in the U.S., has selected Tamara Rojo as its first woman artistic director, effective at the end of this year. But, given the long lead time needed for developing programing, just what she has in mind for the company won't be fully evident until the 2023-24 season.

According to a New York Times article, Rojo was rather vague on what that might be, saying only that she was interested in keeping ballet "relevant to a younger audience that sometimes has new values and principles" and that she would be instituting a system of "checks and balances" when it came to casting and dancer evaluations. The latter may be necessary in part because Rojo's husband, Isaac Hernandez, recently rejoined the SF Ballet as a principal dancer, providing Rojo with a built-in conflict of interest. The search committee asked "difficult questions" about that, the NYT said, but not so difficult as to rule Rojo out. 

Rojo also told the NYT that along with focusing on female choreographers, she would bring "new voices to interpret the classics."

In what was probably a foretaste of what is to come on that front, in her current position as head of the English National Ballet (not to be confused with the Royal Ballet), Rojo mounted a reimagined version of "Giselle" created by Akram Khan, a Londoner born to a family from Bangladesh. The choreography was infused with modern dance and Indian dance elements and the story was reset in what has been described as "present-day dystopia."  Instead of peasants, there are disposed migrant workers labeled "the Outcasts" and the underworld is full of "ghosts of factory workers who seek revenge for the wrongs done to them in life" instead of the traditional Willis -- the spirits of maidens betrayed by their lovers dancing in floaty white dresses.

What then will SF ballet audiences see?  Swan Lake set in a Superfund site? Or maybe Coppelia in a highly automated factory with a bunch of out-of-control robots astonishing the visiting children? 

Sunnie Evers, co-chair of the SF Ballet's search committee, told the NYT that the company initially contacted over 200 possible candidates as possible replacements for Helgi Tomasson, who has been the SF Ballet's artistic director since 1985. By last July, when the list had been narrowed down to eight: "we had three people of color and three women in that round," Evers said, adding "there is a lot of talk about ballet being dominated by white men, so I am thrilled we were not."

Well, that's pretty much where it's at these days if one spends much time reading the NYT.  When it comes to the arts, just who created something -- their gender, color and sexual orientation -- is more important than what actually gets created. In the case of Khan's "Giselle," one could argue it was a case of cultural misappropriation, but that is apparently only the case in a reverse situation -- a white artist making use of something stemming from a non-white culture. The Western canon, if not cancelled, is up for grabs.

Does it Really Matter Who Choreographs a Ballet?

 An interesting question that has arguably been around for a long time, but which has gained considerable currency lately, is: when it comes to a work of art, if it satisfies a viewer, does it matter who created it?

In other words, once launched, does a work of art (and similarly, a work of intellect) stand on it's own?

While I've written about this a number of times, the latest iteration comes from a comment made by the newly appointed artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, a woman named Hope Muir.

According to an article in the  July 22, 2021 New York Times, she was an unexpected selection and as a result, Roslyn Sulcas, one of the paper's dance critics, asked her what kind of artistic vision she presented to the ballet company's search committee.

"There wasn't a vision statement as such," Muir replied. "They gave the candidates a three-year programming exercise that included various anchor ballets that you had to incorporate, as well as making sure there was representation of female choreographers, Canadian choreographers, and Black, Indigenous and people of color choreographers in each season."

In other words, just who choreographed a given ballet is to be a more important consideration for the National Ballet of Canada than the quality of the piece. An alternative approach would be, leaving aside the so-called anchor ballets, considering each piece on its merits without knowing the race, color, national identity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. of the choreographer and let the chips fall where they may.

Muir said she found the National Ballet of Canada's requirement fascinating and satisfying "because when you look at ballet repertory, you realize that most ballets are choreographed by white men." 

Well, let's think about those "anchor ballets," one or more of which must be present in every season -- ballets such as "Swan Lake," "The Nutcracker," "Sleeping Beauty," "Giselle" and so on and so forth. Why continue to mount such time-worn productions?  Well, they sell lots and lots of tickets since the public continues to love them. Choreographed by dead white males (a major target of "cancel culture" movements), they in effect subsidize the efforts of all the others.

The more I read about it, the less worried I am about "cancel culture" -- in the long run, at any rate. 

Ultimately, in the eyes of those members of the public that appreciate the arts, individual works will stand or fall on their aesthetic merits. White male choreography -- perish the thought -- will be with us for some time even if contemporary white male choreographers appear likely to find themselves far from "privileged" in the prevailing circumstances. Indeed, based on Ms Muir's comments, when it comes to the National Ballet of Canada, white male choreographers still alive and working can pretty much forget it.

In Defense of Donald Byrd's Recent Offering for PNB

 It feels a little strange for me to come to the defense of Donald Byrd, a nationally known ballet and dance choreographer based here in Seattle whose work I have tried to like in years past without much success.

But I did enjoy a recent piece he did for Pacific Northwest Ballet called "And the sky is not cloudy all day" that was dismissed for a couple of reasons by Brian Sibert in an April 2, 2021 review published in the New York Times. 

I wasn't originally going to write about this, but PNB recently announced that one upside of its 2020/2021 all-digital season was that the programming attracted ticket purchasers in over 30 foreign countries as well as in all 50 U.S. states.  As a result, the company's forthcoming season will continue to be offered digitally at the same time PNB resumes performances before live audiences.

"And the sky is not cloudy all day" are well-known lyrics from a song called "Home on the Range" that was most famously sung by Roy Rodgers, known as king of the cowboys.  Byrd, recalling his boyhood dreams of being a cowboy, said he choreographed the piece to Aaron Copeland-sounding music by John Adams by way of nostalgia.

Danced by six men dressed in cowboy attire right down to their boots, the piece "presents a picture of something that existed only in my boyhood imagination," Byrd explained in the program notes. "It is like the 'dream ballet' in a Broadway musical. It steps out of time and reality to present a vision free of harshness, where the bloody narrative of the massacre of the Native people is not there."

Sibert, in his review, beat up on the piece for two reasons. First, he called it "not much of an idea" that came across as sluggish and sloppy "compounded by the way boots blunt ballet footwork."  In contrast, I found Byrd's choreography for men in boots surprisingly convincing from a balletic point of view. 

Secondly, Sibert, who is white, raked Byrd, who is Black, over the coals for being insufficiently woke, calling the ballet disappointing from a choreographer "who can usually be counted on for a strong point of view, especially on matters of history and race."

Seattle performing arts companies, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd atrocity, have been falling all over themselves to both include more people of color in their programming and to be more attentive to various long-standing grievances of American minorities. In that context, Byrd's choice of subject matter may have come as a bit of a shock to PNB artistic director Peter Boal who felt compelled to put the following in his program notes to "And the sky is not cloudy ...":

"Tragically the dream of one group resulted in the conquest and genocide of another. As we grapple with our failures as a nation of many people -- some privileged and included, and some persecuted and excluded -- we also look for strands of hope, inspiration, and even dreams." (The boldface emphasis there is that of Mr. Boal.)

While art over the ages has from time to time had a sociopolitical focus, that has not always been the case and it need not be always the case at present. Aesthetics, which has to do with beauty and good taste, has long been the principle domain of art and there is no reason individual works of art can't continue to reside therein. Because Byrd has choreographed one particular dance that is fundamentally aesthetic in nature does not at all mean that he is insufficiently attuned to social justice concerns. 

Once released, a work of art can stand on it's own terms, can make it's own statement, independent of prevailing social currents. "And the sky is not cloudy .,," is in no respect flawed because it apparently fails to take into consideration conquest, genocide, privilege, exclusion, etc. etc.

One can criticize it on other grounds and despite the fact I liked the piece, it could have been better. In my obviously insufficiently woke opinion, Bryd came up a bit short not on grounds of Political Correctness, but rather because he fell short on character development.  His cowboys needed to get beyond being just "a type."

Early in the pandemic, I watched a video offered by the American Ballet Theater in which former ABT soloist Sascha Radetsky taught his wife, former ABT principal dancer Stella Abrera, how to dance one of the three sailors in Jerome Robbins iconic ballet "Fancy Free," choreography that Robbins also used for the Broadway Musical "On the Town."  Both are about the antics of girl-chasing sailors on a very brief shore leave in New York city.

While Robbins' characters were most definitely "a type," he was careful through a host of often small variations in choreography to make sure they came across as three distinct individuals as well,

That's where Byrd came up short, but there is no reason he can't improve his piece for future performances -- if there are any. I think it has great possibilities.

Eschewing Stories, Ballet Often Struggles for Purpose

Reading the New York Times today (March 12, 2020), I glanced through a review of a performance by Scottish Ballet at the Joyce theater in Manhattan, a mecca of dance.

The program, entitled "This Is My Body …" and consisting of two contemporary pieces, was labeled "unispiring" by Siobhan Burke, an NYT dance critic. The first of the two pieces, she said, showed off the dancers' "stunning technique and muscular physiques, but little else."

The ABT: Cassandra Trenary and Calvin Royal III

There are times, when watching a ballet, that one particular paring jumps out as especially  noteworthy -- and even so exciting that hair stands up on the back of one's neck.

So it was the other day at Lincoln Center where the American Ballet Theater (ABT) was performing a new work by choreographer Alexei Ratmansky entitled "The Seasons." It's based on a score of the same name by Alexander Glazunov that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1900.

Although Ratmansky, the ABT's artist-in-residence for the past 10 years, re-choreographed the  piece from scratch, it remains a plotless "divertissement" featuring Petipa's ideas of just which characters should represent the four seasons -- starting with winter and ending with a potpourri of weather.

The ballet, as New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas put it, "overflows with steps" and as a result, in her words, gets choppy from time to time. That may be putting it kindly. It can also seem repetitive and boring.

But toward the end, out came ABT soloists Cassandra Trenary and Calvin Royal III, dancing characters identified as Bacchante and Bacchus, in the "Autumn" portion of the piece and one's attention -- and appreciation -- suddenly sharpened.  They were wonderful individually, but even more important, exemplary as a couple, executing their routine with an exuberant mutual understanding that seamlessly integrated polished technique with vibrant aesthetic and emotional expression.

"More, more!" one wanted to shout.

By the way, Ms Kourlas, whose review I read only after I had seen the piece, labeled Trenary and Royal "excellent."