The painful saga of Edward Villella’s firing from Miami City Ballet seems to suggest that ballet companies are fundamentally uneconomic propositions: to build a strong company with great artistic vision, as Villella has done, costs so much that ticket sales, ballet school revenues, public grants, and other traditional sources of funding cannot support it; private donors must have bottomless pockets and infinite patience. Though some of those donors insist that Villella’s difficult and demanding personality is to blame for the mess.
We’re reminded of a similar brouhaha at Ballet San Jose that resulted in the firing of Dennis Nahat. As Lynn Seymour recently wrote, “creative people are often quite a handful.”
When the dust settles, and (the presumably more pliant) Lourdes Lopez takes Villella’s place at the helm of this gloriously feisty and dynamic company, we’ll see who was proved right.
Its an old story, artistic vision pushing against the power of the purse (did someone say King Louis XIV?). Does an honest examination of the economics of art exist and should we care? Anyone reading this would surely agree that no price can be put on the head of a great artist, and we probably would not be having this discussion without the deep pocket of Lincoln Kirstein.
Perhaps we are left with the fact that great and strong artists must push against their benefactors for as long as they can, and when the relationship snaps, the world should seize all of the crusader’s contributions and give a great sigh of relief that he has made it this far through the money labyrinth!! Making art is messy. No formulas, and please no green eye shades.