The Official London Theatre Guide(ONLY), has a New Year ticket offer for Royal Ballet evening peformances of La Bayadere on January 12,16,21,22.

The £78, £82, and £85 orchestra stalls seats for the above performances can now be bought for £58 and seats in the Amphitheatre costing £45 and £52 can now be bought for £40.

This is the second time in two months, that ballet tickets for the Royal Ballet have been offered at a discount.

Is this the credit crunch biting the arts? Or is it that the casts are not as starry as in the past, or simply that La Bayadere means less in London than, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake.

Are audiences becoming more conservative?

There is a link for booking: http://links.mail.officiallondontheatre.co...p;mt=1&rt=0

Today's Guardian has an article by Jonathan Freedman about how people are coping with the recession, and if you read past the opening opinions about food it seems British tastes in entertainment are going way down market.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...ch-food-culture

At least a couple of readers responses have put a smile on my face on an exceptionally cold and gloomy December morning. Scroll down for a gem from 'iblamethatcher' and then read the heartening news from 'Brusselsexpats' that Swan Lake tickets in Belgium are selling like hot cakes.

The picture on ticket sales from the ROH is very mixed. All the Nutcrackers before Christmas are completely sold out. The Bayadere performances with Acosta on 15 and 19 January are completely sold out in the lower parts with just a few seats left in the slips. But the opening night of the same production with a less stary cast does seem to have hundreds of tickets available.

It is a very interesting point made in this thread, "is the credit crunch affecting the arts? " I do not really know. But the Opera House, and other theatre's could do more to encourage people, who would go to see their productions, but find the costs too prohibitive. In East Anglia, the area of England, where I live, the rail service into London, has recently been advertising a special offer, train fare, 2 seats and meals for the price of one, including the top west end theatre's (I do not think the Opera house is included). When you look at the cost of visiting Covent Garden it is quite expensive, and with fares and over night accommodation added, for those of us, living 2 hours journey away from the capital, a visit, makes an entirely different ball game. You are looking at £200.00 almost for one evening at the Ballet. It is sometimes cheaper to go to Paris, which I do, as I like certain dancers there.

This raises the question of people wanting to see the top stars, whether in France or England. I think this is such a pity, as very often there is no difference in the overall quality of what you see. This is how you find out about new and less well known dancers, they work as hard as their top ranked performers.

I feel sure part of the problem is that children do not learn about the arts these days, unless parents or a family member have an interest. I f they were taught at school about such things, they would perhaps have the inclination, to want to learn more, and see what they have been educated about.

I know for a fact this is true, having run several dance clubs in local schools. In the end I had interest even from a number of boys, one of whom ended up at the Royal Ballet School, thanks to learning about dance within his normal school curriculum. They were not private or special schools, but ordinary infant and junior state or church schools, but with progressive open minded head teachers, who supported the scheme very well.

I used to take coach trips of children and parents to regional theatre's to see Ballet and Dance, which they throughly enjoyed. As I was able to get block bookings it was cheaper, but even in those days it probably cost the parents £25.00 per child, which was quite a lot of money. Most of the parents had never seen a ballet, but were very grateful to be introduced to the Art form.


So I say, educate the young people, make ticket prices within their means, and hopefully the on going effect would support the Arts., thus giving a wider knowledge and enjoyment to more people. It is about time the Opera House, reduced it's seat prices, to allow more people to visit such a wonderful instuition.

And how do we cope with the costs, to enable us to follow one of our chosen interests, we cut down on other everyday things, I do not smoke or drink, but I will save up and go a bit mad, splashing out on a ticket to see the Ballet, or if this is just not possible financially I collect Ballet DVD's to watch on my wide screen surround sound television. I enjoy a private performance in my lounge, but it is still not quite the same as the atmosphere in the Palais Garnier or Royal Opera House.

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I agree with you. I think something needs to be down to encourage young people
into the arts in the U.K. It would also help if prices were lowered for the ROH. I am a
student so cannot go as often as I would like though the student standby scheme
is an excellent step in the right direction.

At primary I was introduced to the arts at a young age we used to go once a term to
our local theatre to see concerts which were especially for schools. I think this initiative should be
used in schools when possible.

I've just checked out the latest exchange rates and the pound is going through the floor. According to the latest tourist rate the pound now buys a mere one euro ten cents with similar falls against the other European currencies and the US dollar. On the other hand the interest rate in the UK is also historically low therefore not much point in saving anymore. Perhaps I should blow my entire savings account on a grand tour of European Opera houses before deflation sets in.

On a less personal level, what effect will this have on visiting companies? I imagine foreign companies visiting the UK will be looking at an automatic loss.

Having little or no competency in economics (just ask my tax preparer), I wonder at what is actually going on. The most benign of the explanations would be a simple response by the ROH to flagging attendance, and so simply following the supply/demand rule. The second, harsher, would be something to do with the tightness of credit, although exactly what, I couldn't say. The third is probably the worst, being actual deflation, where the money is worth more per unit, but there's less of it around. That's a sign of recession teetering over into actual depression.

My understanding is that 'credit crunch' has been recently used for specifically credit-related matters (interbank lending, TED-spreads, consumer loans of all kinds) as well as just for the recession in general. The terms are fairly meaningless this time around, because 'the official recession' wasn't declared until Monday. They acted like this declaration was a big deal, even though most of us have lived through a number of recessions, and it seems a pretty anticlimactic term compared to 'global meltdown', 'financial crisis', 'worst since 1929', which everybody has become very free with for some months, beginning immediately with the failure of Lehman Bros. (except, perhaps, the last one, which only kicked in about 3 weeks ago.) From what I've read, deflation is more on the horizon as a distinct possibility rather than already affecting things. Prices rose last year, but lower prices are not yet reflected in the general economy yet (at least not nearly everywhere, housing of course, though), because deflation as a widespread phenomenon is not certain at this moment. That's what the fiscal stimulus is supposed to help with once it's passed in January. I'm sure the general economic conditions would affect ROH though, namely, lack of consumer confidence bolstered by a blip on the chart by Black Friday in the U.S. and people simply not spending, which they are not. All sorts of 'specials' in all fields would be expected during the holidays, esp. since merchants are hurting and people are going out of business and losing jobs right and left. How exactly this is like Britain I don't know. One of the strangest things I've noticed is that I've cut back on spending without really having to; it's as if 'not spending' is almost 'in the air', I don't know. And then people who have fixed incomes are the ones buying up things like houses at bargain-basement prices. It's, of course, not at all fashionable to flaunt wealth right now, as the Big 3 CEO's learned without having realized that's what they were doing. Deflation is bad for the economy in general, but can mean bargains for certain people who will have the same income but be able to pay less.

I've just heard that a proposed week long visit to London in July by an overseas company is now in jeopardy due to the lack of a sponsor. The financial climate doesn't allow for the 'luxury' of arts sponsorship apparently.

Without naming the company, I have to say that they were to have brought a production to London that would have garnered a lot of interest in ballet circles. All is not yet lost of course, but it seems that finding financial backing will be an uphill struggle from now on.

The Royal ballet tying up with a sportswear manufacturer. Once upon a time it would have been beneath the Royal Opera House to indulge in such sponsorship! Whatever next?

Read on: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=muse

The bad economy is not just impacting Ballet, but other arts organizations in the states as well. There was an article today in the Washington Times that the Baltimore Opera has declared bankruptcy, the Orange County Opera, the only southern California Opera, ceased operations last month. The Virginia Symphony is in dire financial straights and both the New York City Opera and the DC Opera are changing their programs for next year as a direct result of the economy. I might be inclined to think this is just the result of declining ticket sales except that we here in the states heard yesterday that National Public Radio is cutting staff as a result of a loss of corporate sponsors due to the recession. NPR relies heavily on corporate sponsorship as do many arts organizations.

I've seen offers before for ROH discounted ballet tickets. There have recently been offers in the freebie Metro paper. I think they tend to be for performances that are not guaranteed to do well.

The credit crunch is most definitely biting, except for sales of Strictly Come Dancing Live (the original DWTS). The Liverpool Arena date is completely sold out. Also Take That sold out a whole stadia tour within hours recently.