Classical ballet in step with audience taste

In response to an article by Michael Seaver, Anne Maher, the artistic director of Ballet Ireland, argues that her company's success can be judged in terms of audience sizes and box office performance.

The fact that William Butler Yeats together with the church in Ireland abhorred ballet may well be true, as Michael Seaver's article on the Arts page of April 16th suggests. I'm sure that Yeats was not the only Irishman to hold such an opinion, clearly Seaver does too.

However, the suggestion in the front-page billing of the article, "Time for Ballet Ireland to scrap Sleeping Beauty", 24 hours before its first performance, raises the question of Seaver's motivation for writing the article.

Do the seven companies Seaver chooses for the sake of his argument to represent ballet worldwide provide evidence of a "global ballet crisis"? Full-time ballet companies, and indeed other arts institutions, frequently face financial difficulties. This is nothing new - witness the one-off payment of €381,000 from the Arts Council to rescue Opera Ireland from financial ruin earlier this year. Probably only the Russians in the heyday of communism were free of financial worries, however, they would have had other concerns to literally keep them on their toes!

Ballet Ireland appears unique in the company of The Bolshoi, Boston Ballet etc in that it does not suffer from falling box-office receipts. Indeed it is just over a year since Ballet Ireland produced its first full-length work. In 1998, with absolutely no financial support, the company gave 17 performances; in 1999 there were 54; in 2000 76; in 2001 over 90 and in 2002 Ballet Ireland will present more than 110 performances. Ballet Ireland has survived only because there was an audience to sustain it!

Just what is Seaver's measure of success when he refers to "certain thriving contemporary companies"? Although now funded over three years to the amount of €665,000 the costs for this current production of Sleeping Beauty are budgeted at €330,000. This will be met by the allocated €66,000 from the overall funding allocation from the Arts Council and the balance will come from box office revenue. It is expected that box office revenue will generate €100,000 in Ireland alone and more than €265,000 in total during the entire tour.

Seaver's references to "non proscenium spaces" and small venues border on the sneering and smack of a snobbish attitude towards Ballet Ireland and an elitist attitude towards the art form in general. It would hardly encourage the development of an audience for ballet to expect rural populations to travel to the relatively few centres with proscenium arches. If one was to follow his line of argument not even in Dublin do we have a theatre which is capable of presenting either ballet or opera in a satisfactory manner. The National Theatre itself is experiencing ongoing dilemma and argument in its search to present theatre in the manner in which it deserves.

Since 1998, Ballet Ireland has pursued a policy of extensive touring, introducing ballet to as wide an audience as possible and it is a measure of the company's professionalism that we have managed to do this in limited venues. We enjoyed our visits to New Ross and look forward to returning there. Seaver can't have it both ways - he complains of there being more performances in the UK (incidentally supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs) than in Ireland while denouncing performances in small venues in this country.

Should Irish culture be exclusively Celtic as Seaver seems to suggest? Has Ireland no share in a common inherited western European culture? Should the National Gallery of Ireland cover up the French and Italian works in its collection and only display the Irish? The attitude held by some that classical ballet and the classics are a tired art form is an opinion, nothing more, and one clearly not shared by more than 3,400 people who enjoyed performances given by Ballet Ireland in Dublin last month (April 17th - 22nd) and by those who look forward to performances in June in a number of theatres around the country, including "non proscenium spaces"!

What company model best serves the development of ballet in Ireland? Northern Ballet Theatre, based in Leeds, started with 11 dancers in 1969; by 1976 there were 20 dancers. Robert de Warren then began to produce the "classics". Ten years later the company was able to take another step in producing its own work, having established an audience and an identity. Ballet Ireland pursues a rigorous policy of development (supported and approved by the Arts Council). It has a full-time education officer offering workshop programmes in tandem with the company's tours and also throughout the summer. However the issue of full-time training (the lack of which in Ireland is deplorable) is one, in the first instance, for the Department of Education not Ballet Ireland or, indeed, the Arts Council. To suggest that neither Ballet Ireland, the Arts Council nor the ballet community is seeking to nurture ballet or has no vision for its development in Ireland is quite simply untrue.

Michael Seaver writes:

It is convenient but unjustified to accuse me of abhorring classical ballet simply because I raise hard questions around its development in Ireland.

I stand over my premise that now is the time to form the strategies and models for future ballet provision, and that there is no evidence of anyone -engaging in that debate at present.

Tour dates for Ballet Ireland's Sleeping Beauty: June 1st New Ross (051-421255); June 4th-8th Tallaght (01-462 7477); June 11th Cookstown (028-867 69949); June 12th Belfast (028-90 334400); June 13th Enniskillen (028-6632 5440); June 14th Armagh (028- 3752 1821); June 15th Derry (028-7126 4455); June 17th Tipperary (062-80520); June 18th Longford (043 47888)