Ballet and Blue Jeans

Ballet and Blue Jeans

A few months back, I had the fortune of being flown in a private jet from New York to San Francisco. A very wealthy producer invited two of my clients to do a few Swan Lakes in his company in California, San Jose Ballet. We had just done a few galas in the Big Apple and welcomed the chance of going to California escaping a bit from the cold and snow.

During the flight, while the two dancers submerged themselves in to the entertainment system, I looked out the window over the immense land opening below us, and thought.

I thought about ballet and blue jeans.

I’ve always liked blue jeans; I wear them most of the time except when I am at the gym or wearing a suit for a performance or a business meeting.

I’ve realized, as well, that most people wear them all the time. As I glance to my right and look at my two dancers watching a movie, I see that they too are wearing blue jeans. I thought about most of the people I’d come across during that day or any other day for that matter and realized that they too usually wear jeans (I can almost make a bet that most of you reading this article are wearing blue jeans at this exact moment as well).

Why does this happen? How is it possible that a part of clothing is so worn and so well worn all over the known World?

Blue jeans were invented in 1873 by Mr. Levi Strauss who created a working denim attire at low cost for the working class, eighty years later, it became the most popular clothing garment in the planet; just Levis company alone producing total annual sales in 2010 of close to 5 Billion US.

I’ve been immersed in the ballet World for most of my life. First, since the age of eight, as a ballet student, later as an aspiring dancer and now as a ballet impresario. I know the “ins and outs” of the business and love every second and bit of it. I’ve come to appreciate ballet so much I want for it to grow and expand in the same way as blue jeans wear expanded during the last one hundred years.

What do I have to do, or better, what do WE have to do to transform ballet in to blue jeans? What are the steps we must follow so that in one hundred more years people like myself, taking a flight to somewhere, cant do anything to escape the power of ballet? What do I have to do so that in a hundred years anywhere you look you see and experience ballet: on TV, magazine adds, on the airport posters, on the side of buses, on Armani campaigns, on the Rolex ads?

We have to take our art more seriously, we must remember that although we have interesting ballet propositions and choreographies like Swan Lake, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty… although we have and have had talented choreographers starting with Petipá and ending with Bejart, Forsythe or Marco Goecke it still is not enough. We need a constant production of stories, new and fresh! Not only repositions of repositions of repositions, which are mostly done wrong (Petipá already did a good job guys… why mess it up?).

Lets create new stories; the World is filled with stories, with happenings, with situations. Why, if we believe our selves to be so clever and creative, are we not able to see this and give our audience a new experience in the opera houses? Ok, if we cannot create… lets re adapt (Hollywood does this very successfully). Why hasn’t any body bothered to understand that literary classics would be amazing ballet productions. I can already imagine Crime and Punishment or the Karamazov Brothers performed by the Mariinsky; Hölderlin´s poetry performed by the Staatsballett Berlin; In search of lost time by Proust, performed by Paris Opera.

Lets follow business models which have successfully worked in other industries, like the music industry or film industry. Of course, people would say, these are completely different industries… and I would answer the only difference (aside from the apparent ones) is that they have a larger objective market… well, lets produce a larger market, lets create it, lets invent it, lets not be afraid of re inventing ourselves!

Blue Jeans, didn’t always have the market they have today. And am positive that if Mr. Strauss could see what finally became of his denim creation, he would not believe it and cry of joy!

Lets look to the future with optimism, and creativity… lets be less arrogant and more efficient in our doings. Maybe then we will fill arenas instead of theaters with our productions, maybe then we will be able to get paid what Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise get paid for a single film, maybe then we will be considered like Ronaldinho or Messi; lets re consider our proposition to the audience (they are not dumb, you know?) and maybe then we will pay our rents or mortgages more comfortably, we will be able to drive nicer cars, maybe then we will all be able to fly private jets instead of coach… maybe then we will be able to believe in our work and the effort we’ve put in to it. Maybe then the audience will believe more in us and what we do, maybe then. Ballet surely deserves it!

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The plane has landed. We walk toward the exit ramp. The producer who has invited us to California is waiting for us to take us to our hotel. He approaches us to say hi, I look at him and realize he is wearing blue jeans… I smile, maybe, I am not so wrong; we maybe do have a chance.

By: Paul Seaquist