The New York Times - July 16, 2001
by Jennifer Dunning
This is an extract from a longer article.
Guidance — rather than a "Dance 101" intensive — is the goal of Suzanne Carbonneau and Maura Keefe, resident dance historians at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and Carol Landers, director of research and online media at the New York City Ballet.
Ballet, Ms. Landers said, "is not castor oil." The City Ballet Web site, which began operating in October 1998, offers useful information like running times, ticket availability, repertory schedules and notes, biographies of dancers and a travel planner. The planner, which helps out-of- town visitors select New York City hotels, restaurants and good seat locations, was created in response to a desperate plea from a Vermont farmer who wanted to take his wife of 40 years to "The Nutcracker."
"New York City was a foreign country to him," Ms. Landers said. Ballet is the equivalent for many people. Audiences were once drawn in by friends who wanted to share their passion for the art. But many potential audience members are on their own now, she said, and wrong choices can be expensive.
The City Ballet Web site, www.nycballet.com, also offers trivia quizzes, crossword puzzles and a "today in history" look at dance, all of which are intended to appeal as much to the initiated as to the newcomer. Music clips are being loaded onto the site, and Ms. Landers is developing an animated timeline of ballet history. She is also planning a virtual tour of the New York State Theater, where City Ballet performs, that will include observations by its architect, Philip Johnson, and by Lincoln Kirstein, a prime mover in the theater's creation.
The site appears to have helped develop larger and younger audiences. In the company's 1993 "Balanchine Celebration," 6,000 people or 6 percent of the audience was new. This season, the figure rose to 15,000 new ticket buyers. The average age of online ticket buyers is much younger than the norm. But Ms. Landers cautions that new audiences tend not to buy so many tickets as regulars. "And the Web site has been only one of many factors," she said.
One fact did hearten her. She expected online ticket sales for the company's new production of "Swan Lake," a familiar and traditionally best-selling ballet, to be vastly greater than for the less familiar regular repertory programs in the 1999 spring season. But ticket buyers for the repertory outnumbered "Swan Lake" buyers by 12 percent. "If you empower audiences, they can make the choice," Ms. Landers said.
