Joan Acocella in The New Yorker wrote:



Its hard to imagine an art that all to often features a score of children in the Nutcracker as snobbish. Opera on the television show Frasier indicated snobbery. Does ballet really surpass opera as the most snobbish art?

I think she's wrong. I think opera still, and always will, take the cake.

Perhaps she is referring to the performers, not the genre. My sense is that dancers are more aloof and almost always only appear on stage in public. Opera singers seem to do "other" public events, including book signings, or cross over events. Look at Beverly Sills, or Renee Flemming as people who was so out there and personable and of the people (as well as of the celebs). While there may be some exceptions to this "rule" for ballet, I sense that the public sees dancers as rehearsing 24/7 performing and then rehearsing until they retire into oblivion or leave from some injury.

I'm not able to access the Link that Cliff posted. Where - and when -- did this comment appear?

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/danc...ancing_acocella

IMO, the Nutcracker is like the circus of ballet. You always know when it is coming to town. Not exactly high art. A crowd pleaser and the time when all ballet companies are assured a money maker.

Sander0's point is good on this, and there are ways in which the biggest opera stars become far more famous than ballet stars ever could--through things like 'The Three Tenors', or all of Kiri TeKanawa's gorgeous recordings of English folksongs and musicals like 'West Side Story' and 'South Pacific'. Pavarotti singing for many thousands in Central Park.

But I won't read this article, if that's the theme of it, I don't care what she has to say, and that one sentence is quite enough. 'Clad in snobbery' indeed..indeed all journalistic standards would seem to be going to hell if it weren't for the fact that Seymour Hersh is still writing for The New Yorker--and that sometimes really good articles like the one Bart linked to about the Fake Pianist and her Fake Entrepeneur and the Fake Recordings are still very good. How about all the snobbery in the magazine itself when Tina Brown was the editor? Everything was meant to be titillating, from Randy Becker nude in 'Love! Valour! Compassion!' as assessed for size by audience members in the Notes & Comment section (this was idiotic and trashy in the extreme), to short stories about paedophilia in Scotland (this was actually a fine piece of fiction, by someone named MacCann, but I doubt that was the main reason why it was chosen), to Brown herself writing, in the words of NYTimes editorials, during the beginning of the Lewinsky business, about President Clinton's 'heat' and his 'present tense.' You'd have thought you were reading some snob version of 'Modern Romance'--the Times just called it 'an inane entry by Brown herself'.

This subject is so irrelevant that it defies credulity; it's been discussed here at Ballet Talk, even if usually called 'elitism' most of the time, to a farethewell. If anything, ballet needs even MORE snobbery, not less, when you hear such phrases as 'clad in snobbery'. I recall something in the late 70s in the New Yorker, already doing a big bore of its Anglophilia, in an interesting article called 'Aristocracies', which was all about the 'privilege' that came of the 'sense of duty' of the English upper classes. This was febrile enough, but when the author finally started doing the academic number too, we got fatuous stuff about the profundity of Oxford and Cambridge as compared to U.S. universities in the form of 'Harvard and Yale will not do.'

The New Yorker, failing at its own love of its own snobbery, is now jealous of a domain it feels is more snobbish than it can manage to be! Good for Ballet! Wake up and smell the Snobbery!

I don't know how an art form can be snobbish. But there are snobs who attend all art forms -- from opera to ballet to painting to rock. Whether more or less is probably a function of one's familiarity with the particular art and with the people who support and/or make it.

Also, snobbery varies from country to country. I don't think opera is considered snobbish in Italy, where it seems to pervade pretty much the whole populace, at least into the WWII generation.

Opera in this country has made enormous strides in debunking its image as a snobbish art. Ballet seems to be trying to do the same, but as yet has not succeeded as well.

The theme ofAcocella's piece is not snobbery. She wrote a review of the Christopher Wheeldon season and has many interesting things to say about it. What she says about Wendy Whelan and Maria Kowroski, for example, is wonderful. It is definitely worth reading. As for snobbery, I agree with carbro. I'm also with papeete patrick that the subject is irrelevant.

My reaction to this thought is that it is misleading. While it is probably true that ballet dancers appear less in public, I can't subscribe to the proposition that the reason is that ballet dancers are more aloof.

The probable reasons are more mundane IMO. For one thing ballet dancers are typically far younger than opera stars, and are therefore less likley to be comfortable under a publc spotlight. Next, dancer's schedules leave little room for such appearences. Next, ballet is more a "team" art form in which it is far harder to pick one or two "stars" and give them the spotlight; whereas opera is all about doing just that. For example, it is normal for the typical 3 star-quality opera singers in a production to be from out of town, whereas ballet star-quality dancers are nearly always from the company performing; also when ballet dancers travel to perform it is usually with the entire company, not on their own like opera divas do. Not only that but those star-quality opera singers are hyped as individuals via advertising which gives them more of a public image than the typical star-quality ballet dancer. And finally, there are plenty of famous ballet dancers who get nearly the same public exposure as famous opera singers: Nureyev and Baryshnikov come to mind immediately.

Everyone makes choices for themselves, but I think there is a lot of value in reading it, despite thhe comment -- here in full context:



First, you hear as many people coming back from intermission at the opera, asking each other frantically, "What happens in the next act?," although titles have mitigated their pain, if they read any of the languages offered.

Second, a body in motion has a visceral appeal, and less-is-more costumes are commonplace, while classically trained voices are, in most cases, an acquired taste, especially since many people who would have been exposed to them through religious services no longer attend, there isn't an Ed Sullivan, Firestone Theater, or Bell Telelphone Hour to present classical singers on a regular basis, and cross-over to contemporary vocal style is practically impossible: jazz, once practiced extensively by popular singers like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, is now as much of a niche as opera. While I can see people being put off by the formality of Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or feeling illiterate about steps, most ballet presented today outside Moscow and St. Petersburg at least, is neo-classical or contemporary. (There aren't very many steps in Wheeldon.) In many cases, new ballets (or revived Tharp works) are close enough in resemblance to Cirque de Soleil in pretzel positions, or to aerobics, or to jazzercise that they aren't immediately alien. What similar touchpoints does opera have?

Third, the attempt to humanize the performers was used famously in Bergman's Magic Flute during the intermission scenes, and is being revived with Peter Gelb's Met theater broadcasts, with all of the backstage shots -- Anna Netrebko high-fiving her colleagues backastage after an act of I Puritani for example -- and, nonetheless, opera is still the one art form that is a butt of all jokes. (I think partly because it's still acceptable to make fun of fat people.) When I search for Links, I find at least two references by sportwriters, in which an analogy between a player or play to ballet, meant as the highest compliment, appears. The shrieking huge woman with a horned helmet -- turned into the shrewish wife in "Hagar the Horrible" -- is still the poster-child for opera. This suggests a barrier and alienation far deeper than what is felt for ballet. After all, the flexible ballerina is a stereotypical heterosexual male fantasy in a way that Stephanie Blythe, who owns one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard, is not.

Fourth, the way that ballet is sold is, "This isn't your grandfather's ballet." Opera may be sold as "Passion! Murder! Jealousy!" but it's still Carmen, La Boheme, and Don Giovanni, not something choreographed the day before yesterday. If anything, this addresses audience conservatism, not snobbery.

It seems to me, reading the sentence in its context, that Acocella is referring not to snobbery in the social sense but a kind of cozy insiderdom (we-understand-what’s-going-on-up-there-and-the-hoi-polloi don’t) that you do find in a certain kind of fan. ‘Clad in snobbery’ is not quite the same as saying that the art form itself is a form of snobbery, it’s saying that pleasure in ballet can take on that aspect.

Off topic, The New Yorker doesn’t seem to give us much on ballet or dance in general any more, so it was nice to see a longer piece like this one (and this is a very good article IMO).

(Wheeldon also inspired New York magazine to take notice of ballet, which hasn’t happened much since the magazine dispensed with regular dance criticism. We really do owe him a vote of thanks.)



Especially if it would lead to fewer Draculas.

Exactly. It's the inside baseballerishness that makes us both laugh and cringe in self-recognition when we read the The Lavender Leotard. What opera is clad in is fanatacism. Two guys duking it out over Maria Callas forty years after her death is entertaining; two crtics squabbling over who dances Balanchine better twenty years after his undoubtedly looks pointlessly arcane to the unitiated.

I don't understand this. Why can't the uninitiated understand that people have strong opinions about things they love? If I'm interested in a subject, I'm interested in the opinions of the people who know most about that subject.

Absolutely, kfw! As I understood Kathleen O'Connell's point, she was referring to the way these disputes often appear to those who do not come to them with a balletomane's interest and involvement. One man's meat is another man's arcanum.

I would say that it wouldn't be terribly arcane for two critics or fanatics to be fighting however may years later about Baryshnikov vs. Nureyev, the way opera people argue Tebaldi vs. Callas. I would liken the arguments about who performs Balanchine better to arguments about whether the Met does the best version of Don Giovanni, or whether the flame was being passed to newer companies.

I'm starting to understand the different shades of snobbiness,

On the opera side: The dinosaurs who sit in the Grand Tier and make their way into the private donor lounges to sip champagne at intermission. They might get photographed at gala XYZ, but they are usually older. Stepping into the Met is a little like entering a Carnegie library, albeit with no stairs: narrow lobby, then a phalanx of ticket takers, into the swirling and opulent interior. The barrier to entrance is as physical as it is psychological.

On the ballet side -- which between Diaghilev's Ballet Russes days and Ballet Society had ceded the turf to modern dance for quite some time, except perhaps during Nureyev's most media hip years -- the secret, "It," cliquish, "we're hip and you're not" little private, in-group enterprises. Acocella describes Wheeldon's group in terms that both Diaghilev and Ballet Society would understand; if there's a need to popularize, perhaps it's to neutralize the "in-crowd" feeling.

There's a little bit of that surrounding Peter Boal in Seattle: he's trying to build a younger audience, and I suspect he's attracting a younger donor crowd as well. (Median age in the ballet gala seats is well below that for opera.) For Seattle, he's a very glamorous figure. (We don't do well with flashy.) If I were younger and cared, I might be put off by the chic, young(er) people in all of the gala photos, because I wouldn't have belonged among their equivalent when I was their age. It wouldn't have kept me away from the art form, because I'd been attending ballet since I was a young teenager, but were one to approach it cold, the one way that people often decide if they "belong" is by seeing if people like them are doing something or going somewhere.

There is a difference between expertise and the kind of cliquishness under discussion, I think. It is a fine line and there is much crossing back and forth, but it's there.

Yes, my point exactly. I think it takes a certain level of interest and expertise to grok all the hand wringing about the Balanchine legacy. (It’s bitching at a very high level, if I may steal from Mr. Gorey ) It must be very disheartening to someone who was enthralled by their first performance of Jewels to read that what they saw was trash and that they’re really going to have to go to Miami or St Petersburg to see the genuine article. And yeah, the hand wringing over how no one’s been able to sing a note since 1966 can get pretty tedious too, but somehow it sounds more like our grandparents harkening back to their salad days in the old country than snobbery per se. In any event, a Callas - Tebaldi throwdown doesn't necessary challenge the validity of one's enjoyment of last night's HD simulcast from the Met -- you can just bring some popcorn and watch the fur fly.

"There were never any good old days
There is today, there is tomorrow
It’s a stupid thing we say
Cursing tomorrow with sorrow"

Gogol Bordello

Thank you all for your explanations. dirac is right that there is a line here easily crossed, and Kathleen paints a compelling picture of the newcomer who reads that what they were bowled over by was trash (which doesn't mean it wasn't relative trash or that it's snobbish of the critic to say so -- motive counts, and motive can be hard or impossible to discern). But when I see Wheeldon going to the opposite extreme and saying "Our ballets are sexy and we'll make them easy to follow, and we'll even tell you their names so you don't have to open your programs," I have to wonder if building an audience necessitates patronizing it and dumbing down the art form. I realize that's a bit harsh, and maybe it's more than a bit, although I don't mean it to be. But giving people titles because they're too busy socializing to learn the first thing about the program strikes me as pandering and turns me off.

dirac's lovely phase "cosy insiderdom" describes perfectly what is considered off-putting and alienating by general audiences who attend ballet performances but are not devoted to the art form. Some of that is just social resentment, but there's also a feeling that those who "know" are not willing to share their insider information with those who don't.

People tend to feel "diminished" and possibly even intimidated by the presence of expertise that excludes them. They also don't seem to enjoy relying entirely on what they see, in the absence of comfortable and familiar cultural signposts and allusions. So it becomes a bit like: "I don't know which fork to use," which all too often leads to "I'll never put myself in a situation like that again. This fork stuff is stupid."

The average ballet audience member is simply not able or willing to put the time and effort into doing the kind of preparatory work that will help them get the most out of performances that are more than entertainment. Most audience members, in my long experience, have never read the program notes; few attend the pre-performance lectures.

Many, however, seem actually to enjoy being educated if it is done in an easily accessible, nonconsdescending manner. If flashing titles of each dance helps the average audience member to "place" the ballet before he/she sees it, and to get some frame of reference for it, however minimal, I'm all for that. Integrating filmed rehearsal footage, etc., can have its place too, if it doesn't destroy mood and concentration.

I actually love those early '30s movies that started with photos or brief clips of the lead players, their names, their characters' names, etc.. It's better then inviting audiences to the ballet, asking them to pay quite a lot for tickets, and either
-- leaving them alone to figure out what is going on (which seems to be the approach of most established companies), or
-- telling them (as some newer ballet promoters seem to do): "What you're about to see is sexy, edgy, athletic ... and dumb. You should feel quite at home."

It appears Accocella is in her best "Mama" mode and is protecting her young (only 34, she reminds us) charge. She even manages to read his mind:

"he hoped to lure in a new audience.....hence the curtain speech...chinos, messy hair...he seemed to be saying 'I'm not like those other ballet directors, old men in suits. I'm young and cool like you'"

The snobbery remark was the least--I've been hearing it for years but I didn't expect it from her.

I agree about the rehearsal footage, which is akin to a pre-performance talk, although I'd find it irritating before every ballet -- sometimes I want a real surprise. But having read program notes for the title of the ballet strikes me as a very low bar. Perhaps the titling is just a touch of show biz.

We all want mindless entertainment sometimes and there is obviously nothing wrong with going to the ballet for it (I get mine cheaper!), but it seems to me a shame that so many people wouldn't want more of what's actually on offer. We know that from Ballet Society on till his death Balanchine was popular among artists. Of course many of them were under the radar of the general public at the time, but if Wheeldon can raise the money to work with leading artists from other fields, perhaps that will help to popularize his work and bring in an audience eager to meet him halfway. It sounds like that's just his plan.

When I go to the State Theater, I'm not shy about asking the person next to me, or the guy on the balcony dressed in New York black, if they are longtime viewers or at least subscribers, and then picking their brains if they are, and these people have always been happy to talk (and talk and talk, like the opera buff at the library sale checkout Sunday who ran delightfully on and on when I presented her with two opera cds). Spread the word -- we're not as snobbish as we look!

That's pretty standard for opera criticism: It's fine, but it's no Bayreuth. (It's fine, but it's no Bayreuth in the 1950's.) You needed to hear Corelli live. Back in the day, the Met had Bjoerling, Tucker, Bergonzi, etc. etc. every night vs. the No Tenors of today. Of course the version you heard was terribly inauthentic, with cuts, the wrong instrumentation, etc. That high note she sang was not only in the worst taste, but it was flat as well.

Critics, professional and otherwise, constantly tell us how stupid we are for liking anything.

There is so much more information to know in opera. Not only have commercial recordings been around and extensive for over a century -- you mean you can't discuss in detail the differences between the 1952 and 1953 Keilberth Rings? -- the number of pirated recordings that are readily available is astonishing. (Don't even open your mouth if you haven't heard the live [exact date] Callas Aida from Mexico City.) That is in addition to the books and scores that exist for hundreds of years worth of music. If you're not a scholar and don't read music, play an instrument, read the libretto in the original language, and own 19 recordings of the opera you can compare on demand, you can be made to feel like the mud on the bottom of a shoe.

I've always found people at the ballet to be very generous with their knowledge, if for no other reason that they are passing down information about performances that don't exist on tape, commercially or pirated, and dancers we wouldn't necessarily know about, due to the dearth of recordings.

True indeed. A colleague once asked a mutual acquaintance if a particular recording of an opera featuring some well-known stars was worth getting. "Oh, I suppose it's a good enough version for a beginner" was the reply. The withering scorn opera fanatics can heap upon those with insufficient respect for a long-dead, cherished diva or the temerity to prefer a living one with a major recording contract and a crossover album does give one pause. Ballet has at least escaped the curse of having to explain why Andrea Boccelli shouldn't sing Werther -- I don't think ballet has anything quite equivalent to him.

Still, I think the nuances of ballet may be harder to explain than the nuances of opera, which may make it seem like coded smoke and mirrors.

Anastasia Volochkova?

Ballet and Opera are really very different and it's hard to compare them even though you find the same librettos in each genre.

I don't think Boccelli would have become associated with opera were it not for his cross over marketing appeal. There's a whole lot of these pop opera singers, most seem to be coming from the UK.

I was thinking about who attends ballet (dance) and opera. For one thing dance is a young person's "game" while opera seems to favor more mature singers. Dancers loose their edge as they age and singers can go on and on. So this might and probably does have an influence on who attends the two.

If you bring in pop music to the discussion you can see it attracts young audiences and the acts are young

Returning to audience at opera and ballet, you can see older people (I'm one) who attends both, but clearly the average age seems to be younger for dance. And dance is offering all sorts of contemporary productions as well as the classics. Opera seems to be less responsive to new works. And then there's the cost. An opera production seems to be much more expensive to mount than a ballet. If you look at the Met Opera and the ABT's productions you can see the difference, same locale, same theater etc. Big production costs means more expensive tickets and these are purchased by the well heeled to can afford it and sponsor it. There's lots more money in the opera genre all around.

But there is also the phenomena that ballet/dance is a much more precious experience. it can't be bottled into a CD and even watching a DVD is something which requires your attention and you can't have it on in the car, or in the background while you cook, and even then, the essence of ballet is movement and the essence of opera is sound. And then there is the ensemble nature of dance to consider. Opera is almost always defined by the memorable arias, even though they may have a few singers in them. But in dance some of the most glorious passages are involving scores of dancers in a rich tapestry. While there are the pdds and so forth it seems that on the whole ballet/dance genre is more interactive (even in a pdd!) as opposed to singer A belting out an aria in an opera with the cast standing there like statues.

I love both, but I find ballet and dance a higher expression of "art" and always involves some level of abstraction... perhaps because I am more a visual person. I'm more confused than a snob.

Has there ever been any dancers who crossed over to singing?

Good question! Were you referring to opera only? Outside of that, I suppose there's a generation of hoofers who were able to sustain recording careers as singers. But ballet dancers? I'd love to hear from the experts about that.

There are those dancer casts of West Side Story Suite. I'd pay extra money to hear Damian Woetzel sing "Cool."

Oh, of course! WSSS has given NYCB audiences a glimpse at several dancers' hidden talents!

At a book event about two years ago, Jenifer Ringer described how Robbins auditioned the dancers for the singing roles. Her family took the news dubiously that she, as Anita, would be singing "America," because growing up, she was considered the non-singer Ringer. Jen, Damian and Nikolaj all give Broadway-quality star turns.

During their recent engagement at the Joyce Theater, the James Sewell Ballet presented a piece called "Opera Moves", pieces set to various arias, duets, etc. The ballerina Emily Tyra both sang and danced Kurt Weill's "Lonely House" from the opera Street Scene. An impressive tour de force.

Macaulay, in his NYTimes review, referred to her "lip synching". In the program it clearly stated that it was both sung live and danced by Ms. Tyra. A small and unobtrusive mike was evident. Six days later the Times printed a correction.

Her program bio states that Ms. Tyra has been studying voice for the past six years.

The criterion "more appearances for book signings, talk show appearances, and other non-dancing activities" is to be admissible, how many times are dancers asked to make such appearances? I suspect we'll never know. Dancers on talk radio?

papeetepatrick writes:

It’s still happening over at The New York Review of Books, although it’s not new and I can understand some of the underlying reasons for it. There was one piece recently about Scott of the Antarctic that was a real eye-roller.



bart writes:


I agree, and I see no reason not to try. It wouldn’t be appropriate for all ballets and all performances, but I think it’s worth the attempt. (Especially these days when people are working longer and harder and it’s all you can do to get to the performance on time during the week, never mind the pre-performance lecture.)

I'm not sure I understand. By "the 'privilege' that came of the 'sense of duty'" do you mean a sense of duty supposedly felt by the privileged? In other words, do you mean noblesse oblige?

Well, there was Patricia Brooks, late City Opera, and before that...Martha Graham. I recall a Barber of Seville with her, Spiro Malas, Sherrill Milnes, and a tenor I cannot now recall doing the "Mi par d'esser con la testa
in un'orrida fucina" finale to Act I by bouncing off walls and furniture. It was the most gymnastic display of people in 18th-century clothing I think I've ever seen.

That is what the article was referring to, yes. These 'privileged' were not 'supposedly' anything, by the way. They were everything they said they were, in the most absolute of certainties. Early 'royal-watcher' material...



Not precisely, because it doesn't cover enough of what was implied, and also because I didn't personally mean anything by it, I was merely reporting. There could be noblesse oblige, but that was not the emphasis in any case.

Thanks, Mel. I didn't know that. Brooks was a real star for us regulars at the City Opera. I knew she'd done other types of singing, and straight acting as well, but never knew about the modern dance.

I didn't know that either, and did see her do Melisande twice, which she sang beautifully. But she was quite a beautiful physical presence, so it's not entirely a surprise in a sense.

I dunno. If an artistic director is willing to speak about what I'm about to see and show me a snippet of it, I'll want to listen and watch and learn. But if he or she thinks that merely flashing me the title of what I've paid to see is educating me, I'm going to feel they're being incredibly condescending. Perhaps what's going on here has something to do with the digital revolution, with people being less likely to read something on paper, or read something that takes a couple of minutes of concentration, as the notes in an orchestral or chamber music program might still do. If a ballet company really needs to appeal to an audience that won't invest a few minutes of actual effort but needs to be passively entertained like kids watching Sesame Street ("Suzanne Farrell takes one large leap") . . . I mean, who wants that audience? Can that audience really be educated?

If we are referring to the projections of titles and rehearsal clips in the Morphoses programs, I thought they were intended as much to fill the often empty black hole pauses that gape between one little middle ballet and the next. The titles were more of a convenience than an education, and the rehearsal clips were too short (and lacking narrative) to give real insight into what went into making and learning a ballet.

It was an inventive diversion to fill the time when the curtain is down, the orchestra silent and the houselights too dim to allow us to read.

The issue of "snobbery" can perhaps be placed at the feet of the audiences and their level of insider knowledge. I sense that a large proportion of ballet audiences are in or of the dance and music world. And I think this is less so in opera because the nature of the work is more literal.

Most people can "appreciate" musical comedy; not esoteric knowledge required. Opera resembles comedy. In fact, it is the"Broadway" of times gone by in a sense.

Ballet and dance are much more abstract and always require a leap of "faith" with story ballet. The language of the "steps" seems arbitrary and a mixture of beauty and athletics. But athletics where there is no game, no winner, no scores, nor records to break. The genre is definitely one what almost requires some experience to get something profound from the experience. And how does ballet reach out to its audience and lift them up to understanding? I don't see much effort in that. I don't even know if ballet sees this as part of its mission, as much as simply preserving their esoteric art. Could this be why it is painted with the snob brush?

Thanks for that explanation, carbro. That puts the title in a different perspective than Acocella's.

You want snobbery? Try American football, baseball, and boxing fans. If you don't know all the stats back to 1911 on everybody, you ain't worth talkin' to.

Exactly, and the fact is that snobbery is everywhere, including quite low places. The 'pleasure of snobbery' is not known only to inner-city journalists who want to hang out with ballerinas and ballerinos (with or without tattoos). But The New Yorker would naturally want to pick and choose among pet snobberies to condemn + envy, being one itself and competing for the best seats at the Snobbery Awards. They get sillier by the year, and seem to imagine that it goes unnoticed. Their ads alone have always been tell-tale, even though it's not down to a lone single-malt whiskey ad and summer houses in Tuscany quite yet (they're not quite ready for the 'Paris Review' look).

You don't? What is NYCB's Fourth Ring Society intended as but a lure to get people into a ballet habit? At this point, if you buy a membership and only one ticket over the course of a year, you break even on the membership. Other companies would to well to emulate this model.

Also, every company I know has instituted talks, seminars, etc., both within their own walls and as under the aegis of other programs such as Times Talks or Works and Process. These simply didn't exist 25 years ago, and the frequency and depth they offer varies greatly, but they're all an attempt to let the audience gain knowledge, insight and appreciation.

TV commercials are a fairly recent phenomenon.

And let's not overlook programming, which often hypes the hip, new productions over the tried and true.

Many major arts organizations have programs to try to entice a younger audience, often offering discounted subscriptions and/or tickets to members, as well as social events before specific performances. The point isn't just to hear lectures, but to socialize with other people in the general age group, to meet people with similar interests. When this trend started in NYC, I had just aged out of the 35-year-old limit, and by the time they started in Seattle, I had just aged out of the 40-year-old limit. When I was 45, I went to Santa Fe for the opera, only to find on my last day there that the limit for SFO's group was 45

There is a lot of outreach in Seattle, from schools to young adults, in addition to lectures before performances and Q&A's after them. These club-like programs, though, are aimed at breaking down the entrance barrier, along with more younger person-income-friendly ticket prices. Seattle Symphony has Wolfgang, Seattle Opera has Bravo Club, and PNB has Backstage Pass.

I think this is a very apt observation.

Imagine going to a NBA basketball game without knowing any of the rules. First off, you might not "get it". Second, you might think there was an elitist "in-crowd" there too. You'd see them shouting "DE-Fence, DE-Fence"....what the heck is that all about? What's a defence? Then at "intermission" you overhear the couple next to you excitedly talking about players (by name!) executing a perfect "pick and roll", or saying so-and-so is really no good since his "turnover ratio" is too high.

Maybe if ballet audiences took the time to "learn the game" as many sports fans do, it would not seem so elitist to them. (BTW, cost ain't the whole story either.......NBA seat prices are not much less expensive than ballet tickets -- except the nosebleed seats in both cases).

Case in point: Myself and two other (rather well-dressed, younger than I) females squashed into a Green-Line T on the way into Boston (and unfortunately Fenway) to see Boston Ballet's Gala Oct.12.
The train was full of Red Sox fans, some of whom had been partying since long before they stepped onto the train. One rather confident (and boistrously loud) young man tried to pick-up the young woman sitting across from me with a rather one-sided conversation. He made sure to mention his beloved baseball team, the AL playoffs etc.etc.etc.. when she had the temerity to ask "Who are they playing?" (I didn't know either.) Well, you should have heard the bellow, echoed all down the train by the astonished Sox fans, that she didn't know or could be so uninformed, uninvolved, or just plain too dull to know. (As I said, I didn't know either--and from her rolled eyes, neither did the third girl.) For the next 10 stops, that was the entire conversation: How there could be anyone in the Boston area who did not know all, or support all, concerning the Red Sox.
Ok, I'll admit, I am glad when the Red Sox beat the Yankees (who've won too many, and are too smug about it), but I don't follow them, unless they mention on the news they won the World Series.
Which I guess they did--again?

I don't know -- try saying that you like Cats or Les Miz or Phatom and you'll get quite an earful about what real musicals are

I understand why people are intimidated by Merce Cunningham or Pina Bausch or Jerome Robbins' pieces like Watermill, Moves, and The Dybbuk, or anything touted to be intellectual, but what I don't understand is the barrier towards most classical and neo-classical ballet: abstract or not, you go to the ballet, and you see gorgeous naked people. OK, maybe not completely naked, but how much more visceral and basic do you need than beautiful young bodies moving?

Totally OT, but your use of the term "intermission" for halftime above made me think of something..

My mother has been attending ballet for years and years but is also a pretty avid sports fan and has recently been going to more and more sporting events. In the last few years she has taken to calling intermission "Half Time", which inevitably makes me roll my eyes and groan.

Really it is kinda cute though:)

Sports are accessible in a way ballet is not. Games are regularly broadcast on both network and basic cable, and for a little more money your cable or satellite provider will provide access to almost any game you like. The television commentators, if they are good ones, provide analysis and explanation of rules, identify players and their histories, and in general give even the most naive viewer something to go on.

Even when ballet is shown on television, viewers get very little guidance. I’m not suggesting play by play commentary, you understand, but a little something would be helpful to new viewers, I’m sure.